Like Father, Like Daughter
by TheNightmirage
Summary: A series of one-shots, detailing the relationship between James and his daughter from her infancy to his death.
1. Infancy

The baby was crying again.

James peeled his cheek painfully from the metallic desktop as her shrill wails startled him into consciousness. Immediately, his eyes began to burn from fatigue and lack of adjustment to the Vault's fluorescent lighting. He glanced down at his Pip-Boy clock- it was nearing five in the morning. She'd slept an extra hour past her usual feeding time, and he was grateful. He knew the small amount of extra sleep had done him well, but his tired mind did not feel its effects.

He could not remember ever feeling as exhausted as he had in the past few weeks. Part of it was, of course, his daughter's need to be fed every four hours, but he knew most of it was from grief. Between the move from the Jefferson Memorial to the Vault, convincing the Overseer to allow himself and the baby in, taking care of her, and the immediate assumption of his duties as physician, he'd had little time to grieve. The Palmers, who had shown him kindness he had not earned, had taken the baby off his hands for a few hours once or twice a week since his arrival. This allowed him a long, hot shower and some time to truly grapple with Catherine's absence, but it was not enough.

He rose to his feet robotically and made his way over to the crib at the foot of his bed. The baby had kicked herself free of the blanket he'd swaddled her in five hours ago and all of her limbs flailed angrily.

"Sara," he cooed, picking her up and pulling her tiny body to his chest. "Why are you so mad?" Her cries were muffled as she buried her face into his wrinkled lab coat, and her tiny fingers flexed, trying to grab hold of him.

His tired feet begged him to sit down on the bed, but he could not do it. Any bed was perpetually and painfully empty without Catherine. His wife's beautiful, sleeping form was not sprawled across the mattress. Her unruly blonde hair was not there for him to tuck back behind her ear. Her smile would never light up the room again; he would never touch her perfect body. Instead, the shell of the only woman James had ever truly loved lay buried out near the Potomac basin, cold and alone. What he wouldn't do to be lying there with her, unknowing, unthinking, unfeeling…

But the little girl whose drool was now sliding steadily down his neck needed him. He loved her more than he thought possible, so much that it almost physically hurt. But a dark corner in the back of his mind wanted to hate her too. She had cost him everything without knowing it. She had not been forced to watch as her mother's body spasmed in pain and her eyes rolled back.

But he would not…could not ever hate any part of her. Nothing in the world brought him more joy than the sleepy hours he spent sprawled across his Vault apartment's ratty old sofa with all 9 pounds of his small daughter cradled in the crook of his arm. The glow of computer screens that would have been comforting back at the Jefferson Memorial were now empty, and the others who inhabited Vault 101 were sad shells of people: living a terribly boring life in their underground prison. But this small human being, whom he often remembered with disbelief was a part of him and a part of Catherine, seemed more alive than anyone or anything.

He stumbled sleepily toward the fridge as Sara continued to screech into his shoulder. He remembered suddenly that his first appointment of the day was in about two hours as he plunked the bottle of formula into the old, finicky heater. As he gave it a hard tap to force it to turn on, he realized that said appointment was with Ellen DeLoria whose 8 months old son, Butch, had begun sprouting his first tooth last week. As a result, he'd taken to biting whoever so much as touched him, and this worried his mother…when she was sober. James hoped against hope that the woman would be sober for the appointment and not flirt continuously with him while he tried to avoid her son's tooth. Her flirtatiousness irked him more than he'd thought possible-Catherine was little over a month dead. Even if Ellen DeLoria wasn't a drunk and an irresponsible mother, he couldn't imagine looking at another woman…not when the loss of Catherine still stung him so deeply that it physically ached.

Sara took the warm bottle greedily and attempted to grab onto it with motor skills she did not yet possess.

"Easy," he coaxed her. She'd been up the previous night with painful-sounding hiccups for nearly an hour after she'd practically inhaled her formula. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought he was starving the poor child.

He made his way back into his darkened room and switched the computer back on. It flickered to life slowly, bringing into view the medical report he'd been typing up for the Almodovars before he had fallen asleep at the desk. Their daughter, who they'd already named Amata, was due any day. Stephanie Almodovoar was delighted by Sara and insistent that the two girls would be great friends. The Overseer seemed less than thrilled. James hoped that would change over time.

By the time, he'd finished typing up the report, Sara had sucked back nearly three-quarters of the bottle and was ready for attention. She gazed up at him, unblinking.

"Good morning to you too," he said, smiling down at her. He ran a hand across the top of her head, admiring the soft, red fuzz. Neither he nor Catherine knew where this little girl's red hair came from. In the few blissful moments after Sara's birth before the unthinkable happened, Dr. Li had questioned where this gene came from and both tired parents had shrugged and laughed in unison. When she'd flipped on the gene projection, Sara, aged ahead about twenty years, still had stubbornly red hair with a face so similar to his own that it was eerie.

But he could see Catherine in her: in the way that her nose curved up just a bit at the tip, in the shape of her eyes and all of her tiny toes.

"I love you, you know," he told her. She hiccupped loudly in response, and he laughed. He didn't know what the hell he was doing, but somehow he already knew she would turn out wonderfully. Catherine was gone, but in her place was this tiny human being who threw up a lot, didn't sleep enough, and relied entirely on him. He would do right by her.


	2. First Birthday

"Come on. Walk to Daddy."

Sara tottered uncertainly; her tiny hands clung to the baby gate. She gave her father a bewildered look and held on tight. Grinning at her cautious hesitation, James got down on his knees so as to be closer to her level of sight. If she kept this up, at least he'd never have to worry about her getting into too much trouble.

"You can do it," he urged her, beckoning her to come toward him. "You were walking around Jonas' table like a pro the other day." Her look of bewilderment turned to one of frustration at his refusal to accept her unwillingness to let go of the safety of the baby gate. Her expression looked so very much like the one Catherine would give him when he interrupted her work that he didn't know whether to weep or to laugh.

"Sweetheart, Daddy has to go check on the lab with Jonas soon." He rose to his full height and took a step backward. The small girl made a frantic flailing motion, let go of the baby gate and took several unsteady steps toward him. He supposed her dislike of being separated from him was one way to motivate her…

"There you go!" he encouraged her, resorting to the voice he used to heap praise: a voice far shriller and upbeat than his normal. She quickly realized what had just happened, glanced anxiously from him to the baby gate and then back to him and became aware that she was stranded between the safety of the gate and her father. Her face screwed up in the typical pre-screaming expression.

"No, no, no, it's okay!" he said, quickly, holding out his hands to her. "You're halfway there." She made a frantic half leap and half walk toward him and fell dramatically into his open arms.

"Look at you!" he said, scooping her up and planting a kiss on her head. "My, my, already a year old and walking like a champ." She beamed at him. "Your mother would be so proud of you."

Cautiously, he entered the baby pen, still holding onto her. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was about to be set down.

"I know you hate it when Daddy leaves you alone, but I've got a bit of work to do. It won't be very long at all, and I've put your favorite red ball in here." Gingerly he set her down by her collection of toys and backed away quickly, hoping she wouldn't scream. Instead, she glared at him with a look of deep betrayal.

"I'll be back soon," he promised, patting the top of her head. "And we'll read the SPECIAL book you like so much. I love you." She continued glaring at him as he switched on the baby mobile's music and crept out of the room ashamedly.

He hurried down the Vault hallways; anxious to get back to Sara and to avoid speaking to anyone he didn't need to. Naturally, his luck did not hold, and as he rushed past the Deloria's apartment (cringing as he heard Ellen scream at her son), Stephanie Almodovar called out for him from the other end of the hallway. Her daughter, Amata who was only 5 weeks younger than Sara and a constant playmate, was balanced on her hip.

"James!" He swore under his breath. "Isn't today Sara's birthday?" He composed his face into what he hoped was a sincere smile and waved to the Overseer's wife.

"Yes, it is. It's hard to believe she's already one."

"Where is she?"

"Well, I was just…" He was suddenly ashamed of his parenting. What part of him had thought it would be okay to leave his one year old child in a play pen by herself on her birthday?

"She's napping," he lied. "I was running to the lab to get some reports while she was still asleep."

"Will you bring her over later? I know Amata would love to play." At the sound of her name, Amata glanced up at her mother and smiled. "I made a cake too."

"Of course. I'm sure Sara would love that to. Thank you. Now if you'll excuse-"

"It's the birthday daddy!" James' composure fell as the slurred words of Ellen Deloria rang out into the hallway. Stephanie gave him an exasperated glance. Even Amata pouted.

Butch's mother came sauntering out into the hallway, a bottle of scotch in one hand. Her son made a sound of protest as he left and she called back to him.

"Shut up!"

"Maybe you shouldn't yell so-" James began, half-heartedly.

"Were you planning anything for Sara's-_hic_-birthday?" Ellen continued, oblivious to the doctor's slight protests about how she treated her child. "I'm sure Butch would love some play-_hic-_mates."

James thought Butch would actually probably prefer to bite Sara as he had done two weeks prior but decided not to bring this up.

"No, I wasn't planning on much. She's not really one for crowds. You know how shy she is."

"Just like her dad!" Ellen swung a playful punch at James' arm and completely missed in her drunkenness. "Say, isn't this the one year anniversary of Caitlin's death?"

James tried not to associate his wife's death with his daughter's birthday: Sara did not deserve her day of celebration to be a day of grief too.

"Yes," he conceded sadly. "_Catherine_ has been gone a year now. I really don't want to talk about-"

"You should date again," Ellen suggested.

"Stop it!" Stephanie interjected. "You have no right to say things like that!"

"I was just-"

"Ladies," James cut in, irritably. "I'm pretty sure I just heard Sara cry. If you'll excuse me."

He practically broke into a run once he was more than a few feet away from the now bickering women, suddenly eager to be in the presence of Sara whose life was so simple and happy.

When he arrived back into their apartment, he found the baby gate open. For a moment, a welling of panic rose in him…until he saw her sitting on the floor with the You're SPECIAL book propped open in her tiny lap.

"How did you…?" He glanced over at the baby gate then back to his daughter who was smiling proudly up at him. "What a smart girl you are."

He caught sight of the stitched Bible verse that rested on her nightstand and Ellen's mention of Catherine came back to him. It was Sara's birthday and she certainly deserved a celebration, but that didn't mean they shouldn't remember her mother too…even if only for a moment.

"Come here, honey," he said, getting down onto his knees and extending a hand out to her. Sara gingerly pushed the book off her lap and half crawled, half slid over to her father. He took her under the arms and pulled her onto one of his knees.

"You see this?" he asked, pointing to the stitching. She looked over it and gurgled a string of syllables at him in response, mostly consisting of "Dada" and "Baba".

"That was your mother's favorite Bible verse," he continued, smiling at her incoherent baby noises. "Revelation 21:6. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely."

"Dadadadadada," Sara responded. He pulled her in close to him and buried his face into her red locks that were growing at an amazingly fast rate. She seemed to understand this was meant to be a quiet moment and stopped babbling. She then grabbed hold of his neck, stood up on his knee and pressed her mouth to his ear in what he supposed was meant to be an extraordinarily sloppy and wet kiss.

A mixture of terrible loneliness at Catherine's absence and pure joy for the little girl in his arms rose in his throat.

"It's always going to be you and me, honey. You and me. But that's okay. So long as we've got each other, that's all that matters."

"Dadadada," she said again.

"Okay," he replied as a chuckle escaped his lips. "Let's go see if your friend Amata wants to play. And I've heard her mommy may have a surprise for you." He placed her on the floor and stood up. She reached up and grabbed his hand, wobbling a little on her still unsteady feet.

"Come on, birthday girl. I've got you." They took a few uncertain steps together out into the hallway. "I've always got you."


	3. An Unexpected Loss

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Overseer. If there's anything-"

"No. Thank you for all you've done, James."

Both men knew the words were empty on both sides. There was nothing James really could have done other than make her comfortable, and the Overseer would never think it was enough. A long, uncomfortable silence passed between them.

"I must get back to Amata."

"Of course. I'm grateful she's slept through this."

"Yes. I don't know how I'll tell-" The Overseer's voice hitched as he suppressed a sob with difficulty. "Perhaps we could just deal with the body in the morning."

"Jonas and I will take care of her. Please try to get some sleep."

"I won't. I'd be indebted if you could send out an announcement about her death. I don't think I can…"

"Absolutely. Again, if there's anything at all-"

"I can ask nothing more of you. Good night, James. Jonas." He nodded to them both.

"Good night."

"Good night, sir."

Alphonse quickly exited the room. The two scientists saw him raise a trembling hand to his brow before the door shut behind him. Jonas exhaled loudly to break the silence that followed his departure.

"Shit," he muttered. It was all he said, and James felt no other term could have summed up the evening. A frantic Officer Gomez who had been walking his young son, Freddie, around in an attempt to get him to go to sleep when he'd witnessed the accident had roused James about two and a half hours earlier.

No one was entirely sure how it had happened. Stephanie Almodovar had fallen down the stairwell leading from the atrium to the lab in the basement and smashed her head into the sharp doorframe once she landed. Gomez said she seemed to have been running and glancing back over her shoulder frantically. The Overseer had shot this theory down with such furious vehemence that Officer Gomez, Jonas, and James all dropped the subject very quickly.

James had quickly realized there was nothing he could do to save her life. She'd hit her head too hard. All he and Jonas had done for the past 2 hours was administer morphine until she'd died.

James sat down hard in the nearest chair and pressed his index finger and thumb to his throbbing brow. He tried not to watch as Jonas tugged a sheet up gently over Stephanie Almodovar's face.

"You okay, doc?" He looked up at his lab assistant.

"Just brings back some bad memories."

"I can send out the announcement if you'd like."

"That would…yes, I would appreciate it."

"Sure thing."

A silence passed between them, but it was not uncomfortable. James appreciated their silent understanding of one another. He and Jonas had bonded fairly quickly upon James and Sara's arrival in the Vault two and a half years ago. The entire Palmer family had shown father and daughter kindness when the other Vault inhabitants still skirted around them suspiciously in the hallways. Not to mention, Sara absolutely adored Jonas: his name had been one of her first words a year ago.

It was for all these reasons that James often felt terrible for keeping his continuing, small-scale experiments on Project Purity from his colleague. There was nothing he could do about it though. His very continuance of the experiments would very likely get him thrown out of the Vault-he could not endanger his close friend's place in it.

"Get some sleep, doc" Jonas finally spoke up. "I just have to send out the announcement. I got it covered."

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely." James rose to his feet and clapped a hand on Jonas' shoulder. Jonas nodded at him and made his way over to the computer terminal in the back corner. James exited the clinic, shedding his white lab coat as he did so.

He slept fitfully for the next few hours. At 6 AM sharp Sara came paddling into his room as she did every morning. With a bit of assistance, she climbed into his bed, burrowed her way into his arms and fell back into a light sleep.

This routine had started inexplicably about three months ago, but it now played itself out every morning without fail. James did not need a clock: he knew it was 6 AM when Sara climbed into bed for around an hour of sleepy snuggles before they started the day. This hour was undoubtedly his favorite of the entire day.

He closed his eyes and stroked her hair, deep in thought. How was he going to explain what had happened to Amata's mother? Whenever the little girl had asked about Catherine, he'd been able to placate her with the simple answer: "Mommy's not here anymore, but she still loves you very much." For the toddler, Catherine was an abstract sort of figure: a beautiful woman whose image was plastered around her father's room.

But Stephanie Almodovar had been very real and an integral aspect of the little girl's life. She'd made both of Sara's birthday cakes and often supervised Amata and Sara as they played. She was never shy and always made a point to say hello to his daughter if she ever saw the toddler in the hallways.

Around 7, Sara stirred and sat up, her growing hair askew from sleep. She looked down at her father and patted his arm.

"Get up now," she told him. "Morning." He adored her half-sentences.

"Good morning, sweetheart. Did you sleep well?"

"Mhmmm. I'm hungry."

"Me too. How does cereal sound?"

"Good."

Twenty minutes later father and daughter were sitting across from one another eating breakfast and James was at a loss for words. Sara certainly wasn't, and she prattled on about things he was only listening to slightly.

"Sweetheart…" he cut in on a particularly dramatic retelling of Sara's adventures with her raggedy, old teddy bear. He also loved her extensive imagination. She stopped talking immediately and looked over at him.

"It might be a funny kind of day," he finally told her.

"Why?"

"Well, last night while you were asleep, Amata's mommy hurt herself very badly." Sara did not say anything in response to this so he willed himself to press on.

"And Jonas and Daddy tried very hard to help her, but she…"

Sara continued gazing at him intently. Her gaze reminded him so strongly of Catherine when she was processing a lot of information.

"Well, she fell down some stairs and hurt her head. Because of this her body stopped working."

"She sleeping?"

"No, honey. She can't eat or play anymore, but she isn't hurting."

"Like Mommy?" James stared across the table at his small daughter who was still gazing at him with intense curiosity. Of all the things he'd expected her to say or do or ways in which she would react react, mentioning her mother was _not _one of them.

"Yes. Like Mommy."

"Okay." Sara reached down and put another spoonful of cereal in her mouth. "Amata still talk to her?"

"What?" he asked, not quite grasping her meaning. "I mean, yes, she could…"

"I talk to Mommy a lot."

James meant to ask her about this endearing habit, meant to tell her how wonderful he thought that was, meant to find out what she talked to Catherine about. Instead, a wave of unspeakable grief, the intensity of which he had not felt in a while, broke over him, and before he knew it, he was crying.

He felt terribly stupid for crying in front of his two year old daughter. She was an intuitive girl, and she was aware that he missed her mother very much. However, he had never shown this grief to her: it had always been confined to hours when she was out playing with Amata or sleeping.

But damn did he miss Catherine. He'd become more adept at pushing this grief below in the past year and half. The hectic days of acting as Vault physician, continuing his Project Purity experiments in secret, and, of course, raising a remarkably lovely two year old made for easy distractions. But the sudden death of Stephanie had brought the terrible feelings back to the surface with sickening force.

"Daddy. Don't cry." He opened his mouth to reassure her that he was okay, that he was just sad that Stephanie had died, but he found he could not form words. Through eyes blurred with tears he saw Sara navigate her way down from her chair very carefully and make her way over to him.

"Daddy, don't cry. Love you." She held her arms out to him, and he reached down and pulled her into a tight hug.

"Love you love you love you," she assured him.

"I love you too," he choked.

"I not leave you."

"I know. I know, sweetheart."


	4. Bullied

"You ever think about having kids, Jonas?"

James' colleague looked up at him from the desk he was bent over, scrutinizing some medical reports.

"What?"

"I was just curious. You're so great with Sara, and she just adores you." Jonas chuckled and adjusted his glasses.

"I appreciate the compliment, doc, but kids aren't for me. Sara's a good kid because she's not stupid, but I think most people are pretty dumb till about the age of 25…and even then some of them don't smarten up."

"That's pretty cynical."

"I'm a doctor. I'm allowed to be cynical."

James laughed and shook his head. He opened his mouth to ask if he needed to refill Beatrice Armstrong's mood stabilizer (that the Overseer had ordered she take despite James' vehement opposition to the idea) when the familiar _clang-clang-clang_ of his seven-year-old daughter descending the stairwell into the lab sounded. He always tensed a little when he heard the sound, as these were the very stairs Stephanie Almodovar had died on five years earlier. He breathed a sign of relief as her favorite purple sandals came into view, followed by her baggy Vault 101 jumpsuit and then her dirtied canvas schoolbag (that had once belonged to Jonas). On the last step, however, his heart shot into his throat.

Her nose was bleeding, and she was crying.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

James dropped the clipboard he was holding. It fell to the floor with a loud _BANG _that he was entirely oblivious to. There was nothing else in the world but him and his daughter who was hurting.

He knelt down so he was at her level and helped slide the canvas bag from her shoulder. She walked into his open arms and buried her face in the crook of his neck; the very same place she had done so as an infant.

"It's okay, sweetheart," he reassured her, rubbing her back. "Tell me what happened." Jonas handed James a wad of tissues, which he accepted with a grateful nod.

It took her a few minutes, but Sara finally pulled away from her father. James gingerly pressed the tissues to her bleeding nose.

"What happened, honey?" he asked again.

"Butch," she said between sniffles. "I was walking here after class and he cornered me and said my glasses were dumb. I said I needed them to see and that it wasn't very nice of him to tease me, so he pushed me into the wall. I hit my nose on it, and he laughed at me and said he was surprised my blood isn't stupid and ginger like the rest of me."

"That little ass," Jonas muttered. "I think your hair is pretty awesome, Sara. And all the cool people wear glasses." He indicated his own and gave her a cheesy thumbs-up. She smiled a little.

Jonas had her laughing within ten minutes. He'd picked her up, thrown her (softly) onto the clinic's spare gurney that they usually kept in the lab and proceeded to push gurney and giggling seven-year-old around the old equipment at top speed.

"Sweetheart, will you be all right to stay here with Jonas for a bit?" James asked, overdramatically dodging out of the way of the speeding gurney which elicited more laughs from his daughter.

"Yeah, Daddy. Where are you going?"

"I need to speak with someone. You two just stay here for a bit, okay?"

"Okay. Jonas, watch out!" Jonas made a high-pitched squealing noise and pretended to narrowly avoid a table of tools as James made his way out of the lab with unspeakable anger coursing through his veins.

He had always prided himself on being an understanding and patient individual. Indeed, he had to be so in order to serve as the Vault's psychiatrist as well as its primary physician. This easy-going nature had served him well back at Project Purity: he'd talked Madison Li down several times when she was ready to strangle one of their Brotherhood guards.

But right now he was so mad he could hardly think straight. Who did this little eight-year-old punk think he was? He knew kids picked on each other from time to time, and, for the most part, he'd made peace with that fact even as he much as he would like to protect Sara from ever hurting. But a snide comment now and then in the heat of the moment was one thing. This boy had not only insulted her and made her cry, but he'd _pushed her into a wall_. If murder were ever an acceptable solution, James knew exactly what would happen to Butch.

It was with a surprisingly steady hand that James knocked loudly three times on the door to the DeLoria's apartment. As he waited for a response, he tried to steel himself for a variety of reactions. He was determined to remain calm.

He heard someone shuffle over on the other side of the door and press the button to open it. It slid up with its usual rapid _swish_. Butch gazed up at him from the doorframe.

"Yeah?" the boy said. "What do you want?"

"Is your mother here?"

As if on cue, Ellen's voice hollered from the bedroom.

"Who is it?"

"It's the doctor."

"I'll be right out, James!" As soon as she spoke his name her voice changed from irritable to sickly sweet.

"Take your time," he muttered under his breath.

"You can come in, I guess," Butch said. He moved aside to let James into the apartment.

Doctor and young boy sat across from each other on separate, ratty couches. James noted, with delight, that Butch was wringing his hands a bit nervously.

Ellen DeLoria emerged from the back hallway a few moments later, frantically patting down her hair. Her cheeks shone quite red: she seemed to have thought it appropriate to apply liberal amounts of blush before coming out of the bedroom. To her credit, it seemed to have been applied fairly evenly. James hoped this meant she was sober.

"How can I help you, James?" she asked. She came and sat alarmingly close to him. He gently moved further down the sofa.

"I wanted to talk to you about Butch's treatment of my daughter. She came to see me in the lab after classes today, crying and with a bloody nose. She said Butch pushed her into a wall and repeatedly insulted her."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Ellen demanded, rounding on her now cowering son.

"Please, I just wanted to discuss-" James futilely tried to interject.

"This is the third time someone has come to me saying you've been pulling this crap! God knows next time it'll be the Overseer and not the nice doctor here, and I swear I will kill you!"

"Ellen, _please_!" James nearly shouted, horrified at her reaction. As a fellow parent, he certainly knew all about how adept children could be at causing trouble and irritation. His daughter had inherited her mother's stubbornness, but he would not even dream of ever threatening her harm. He took a deep breath and continued.

"I simply wanted to make you aware of the situation and get Butch's reassurance that it won't happen again."

"Hell no it won't happen again if he knows what's good for him," Ellen snapped, still glaring daggers at her son who was now positively cowering.

"I would like to hear it from him."

"I won't be mean to Sara anymore," Butch whispered.

"Thank you."

As James exited quickly several minutes later, eager to escape the tension and anger of the DeLoria apartment, he somehow knew Butch's words were empty. They had been spoken out of fear, and that hurt him.

How sad, he mused, that an eight year old child should be able to injure him-a grown man who was pushing forty. Perhaps it was not the fact that Butch's words were empty, however, that so upset him, but the reality they represented. He could not always protect his little girl.

In the past seven years, he had entertained the thought of leaving the Vault again once she turned eighteen. He'd convinced himself that he was lucky: she was an intelligent, well-behaved, reasonably independent kid. Surely, given eleven more years, she would be completely self-sufficient. She'd probably go on to marry that Freddie Gomez kid; they got along quite well. She would be happy.

But now, as he headed back toward the lab, he could not bear the thought of ever not being there for her. He, Catherine, and Madison had dreamed big long ago and claimed Project Purity was their obligation: the Wasteland deserved pure water and since they had the brainpower to deliver that, then they had to. But none of them had expected a baby (it really shouldn't have been such a surprise, he had realized in retrospect, as he and Catherine could hardly keep their hands off one another).

Now, he knew in his heart, his true obligation was to care for this precocious little girl who he would not trade for the Wasteland to have all the purified water in the world.

Jonas was showing a delighted Sara how to make a paper airplane out of a Blamco Mac & Cheese wrapper when James got back to the lab.

"Hi Daddy!"

"Hi sweetheart," he said, smiling. "Are you and Jonas behaving?"

"Probably not," Jonas replied. "Now don't make these in class. And if you do, you _did not_ learn it from me. Edwin would kill me."

"Edwin?" Sara asked.

"Mr. Brotch," Jonas corrected himself.

"I didn't know you were friends with him," Sara said. James knew his daughter did not but he certainly saw Jonas shift a little uncomfortably at these words.

"Yep."

Were Jonas and Edwin together? No, certainly not. Jonas would have told him. Still…

"Daddy, is tonight pancake night in the cafeteria?"

"You bet it is, munchkin."

"Good! Jonas, will you come eat with us?"

"Sure, kiddo."

"Come on, Sara," James said, holding out his hand to her. "Let's get changed and drop your stuff off before dinner."

"Okay," Sara said, glancing down sadly at the unfinished paper airplane.

"I'm sure Jonas will teach you how to finish that later."

"You bet I will."

Sara grabbed her canvas bag and darted over to her father. He inquired about her homework, and she groaned about it all the way back to their apartment.

"Where did you go when me and Jonas were making the airplane?"

He unlocked their apartment door with a quick swipe of his ID card and ushered her inside.

"I went to talk to-what did I tell you about putting your bag on the floor? That goes in your room. Thank you. I went to talk to Butch and his mother."

"What did they say?"

"Butch promised me he would not tease you anymore. If he does, you let me know right away, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks for looking out for me, Daddy."

"It's my job, sweetheart. Nobody messes with my Sara." He grabbed her around the middle and tossed her over his shoulder. She laughed uproariously.

"I'm going to throw you on the sofa."

"Nonononono!" she squealed dramatically, still laughing.

"And then I'm going to tickle you!"

"Nononononono!"

He did as promised, and as she squirmed and giggled and futilely tried to tickle him back he felt more unsure than ever about his desire to someday go back and finish Project Purity. But that was a decision for another day.

The Wasteland could wait. He had to be Sara's daddy for a while longer.


	5. The Facts of Life

"Daddy, can I ask you something, even if I think it's bad?"

James glanced over at his nine-year-old daughter who, until that moment, had been working diligently on her math homework.

"You can ask me anything, sweetheart."

"Well, today in classes, Butch and Wally were fighting, and afterward when we got out Wally said that Butch was only mad all the time because his mom had sex with a lot of people in the Vault. Butch beat him up really bad, and I'd never seen the two of them fight at all. So I didn't know what 'had sex' meant, and I didn't know why it made Butch so mad."

James felt his jaw drop open as this barrage of information was thrown his way.

_Oh God, not yet_, he thought. _Not this conversation. I'm not ready. I need to write a script for this or something. Maybe the library has a book? I can just give that to her and let her figure it out._

No, that was unfair to her, and she'd asked so politely and was now gazing at him with intense curiosity.

"Uhhh..honey, that's a long conversation that we need to have, so why don't you finish your homework first, okay?"

"I just have two more problems."

James cursed Mr. Brotch for not assigning the entire textbook that night.

"Well, you finish those up, and then we'll talk."

It took her less than five minutes to finish the remaining problems and pack everything up in her canvas back for the next day. James also cursed his own genes for passing along a propensity for solving mathematics problems easily.

She came and joined him on the sofa, wrapping a blanket around her pajamas to shield herself from the chilly Vault air. He normally found the way she surveyed people when she was curious endearing. Now it was terrifying.

"Well, see, boys and girls have different parts, right?" he began, awkwardly. "And, for certain purposes, those different parts…kind of…fit together."

"You can take them off?" Sara asked.

"What? Take what off?"

"The different parts. You can take them off and then put them together? Like a puzzle?" She made an awkward attempt at interlocking all of her fingers together to signify this connection.

"No! No, they don't come off," James said, grimacing at the very thought.

"So…you put them together while they're on you? But you'd have to get really close, wouldn't you?"

"Yes. You do."

"So you just get really close for a while? Why is that bad?" James caught sight of the cords hanging off their apartment window curtains and briefly considered hanging himself. That would be easier than explaining this.

"Well, it's a bit more than that, sweetheart. Ideally, this should only be done with someone who means very much to you. The two people involved take off their clothes and sort of…hug. And the man sticks his part into the woman's." In a sad attempt to explain this, James resorted to the juvenile gesture of shoving his left index finger through a hole created by his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. He saw Sara's eye twitch visibly in horror. He felt the same way but willed himself to go on. This would be over with soon enough, and they would never have to speak of it again.

"And the man and the woman…" (_my, those curtain cords were becoming more appealing by the millisecond), _"well, they rub those parts together in a way that feels very nice for them. And sometimes when they do that, they make a baby." A horrifyingly long silence followed this statement. James felt embarrassment flushing into his cheeks.

"That's gross," Sara finally conceded.

"Well, it won't seem that way when you're older."

"No, it will."

"Okay." James chuckled a little, in spite of himself. If his little girl wanted to remain virginal her entire life-well, that would suit him just fine. There would be no young men to threaten with bodily harm should they hurt her.

"Why don't you go take your shower, sweetheart? Then you can come help me with some filing for the clinic before bed."

"Okay!" Sara jumped up, tossing the blanket she'd wrapped around herself onto the sofa. He adored her eagerness to simply be around him (and told himself he should enjoy it while it lasted).

She stopped quite suddenly in the middle of bustling off to the bathroom, clearly deep in thought. He recognized the face she made whenever she was thinking: it was the very same Catherine always made.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Can only a man and a woman do…that?"

"You mean, have sex?"

"Yeah."

James was a bit taken aback by this question. Homosexuality was something not spoken of in the Vault, and even though he personally grew more suspicious of Jonas and Edwin Brotch by the day, he'd thought he would have a little while before he had to explain the notion to her.

"Well, no, two men or two women could do that. It would just work a bit differently since they'd have the same parts."

"Can they make a baby too?"

"No, that does have to be a man and a woman."

"Oh, okay. Thanks, Daddy!"

"Of course, honey…"

By 11:30 PM, Sara had been tucked cozily into bed for nearly two hours, and James was surveying several old photos of Catherine over the rim of the large glass of scotch he'd poured himself to relieve the tension of the evening. The alcohol stung his throat as it went down.

He wasn't entirely sure what had possessed him to spread the photos of his dead wife over the coffee table. It had been a while since he'd really thought about her: swept up in a world of ungrateful patients, trying to learn how to braid Sara's hair because all the other girls were wearing braids and she _had _to do it too, and making sure Butch DeLoria and his two minions didn't give his little girl too much trouble.

He traced the gentle curve of Catherine's jaw in his favorite photograph of her and him. They were both so full of life in it: her head tilted back in a roar of beautiful laughter and his face pressed up against the nape of her neck, grinning at the dirty joke he'd just told her.

"I wish you could have had that conversation with Sara," he spoke aloud to the empty living room. "You always were better with words than me." He took another gulp of scotch and cringed as it burned his insides.

"She's so much like you, love. Everyday she does something that reminds me of you. I wish she could have known you. You would be so very proud."

The room felt lighter as he spoke. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but some part of him hoped it was Catherine's presence. He was not a particularly religious man, but somehow he felt his wife had never truly left him. She was everywhere: in the movements and thoughts and expressions of their daughter, in his dreams, and in the walls of the Vault itself. He knew she was out in the Wasteland too, keeping watch over the remnants of Project Purity. He ached to join her there too.

The memories brought him more joy than sadness now for which he was grateful. Of course, his bed seemed perpetually empty and sometimes her absence would hit him suddenly with as much force as it had nine years ago.

"She's growing up so fast," he continued as if his wife were sitting right next to him. "It scares me. She'll be a teenager soon enough, and what if she doesn't want anything to do with me then? I don't know what I would do without her."

"Daddy?"

He looked up, startled at the intrusion into his thoughts and conversation. Sara was standing at the entrance to the living room, rubbing her eyes in the light.

"Is something wrong, sweetheart?"

"I had a really bad dream. Who are you talking to?"

"Your mother," he answered honestly. "Do you still talk to her too?"

"Sometimes," she told him. "I don't think she's really gone."

"I don't either. Come give me a hug, honey."

The nine year old slid easily into his arms. He pulled her into his lap and noticed her feet now nearly reached the coffee table from where she sat, curled into him.

"Have you gotten taller?" She shrugged.

"I think you have. You are going to be ten feet tall by next week!" Sara giggled.

"Why do you have those picture of Mom out?" she asked.

"I just felt like looking at them. It had been a little while."

"Can you tell me about her?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

James grinned at his daughter's curiosity. He'd told her plenty of stories of

her mother, but she never seemed to tire of them.

"She had the very same favorite color as you."

"Orange?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know that! What was her favorite food?"

They stayed up till nearly one in the morning talking about Catherine. Luckily, it was a Saturday so Sara would not be sleep-deprived in classes the following day. As James tucked her in for a second time and headed to bed himself, he thought of how lucky he was to have her.


	6. Growing Up Fast

"Doctor Fairchild, get the lights! I think she's coming!"

Grinning at Amata's excitement, James did as she asked and flipped off the lights in the cafeteria. They were all plunged into a surprisingly deep darkness.

"What the hell?" Butch exclaimed from somewhere.

"Shhhh! Be quiet or she'll hear us!" Amata hissed in response.

They all listened as the unsuspecting ten year old on the other side flipped open the door panel. The door to the cafeteria shot up, revealing the pitch-blackness inside it. James saw his daughter blink in confusion a few time before he flipped the lights back on.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Amata practically screamed running over to her best friend and giving her a hug.

"Don't crush the poor kid," Stanley said from the corner, laughing.

"Me and your Dad planned this! Aren't you surprised?"

"Yeah!" Sara admitted, glancing over at James. He winked at her.

"Let me show you what I got you!" Amata continued excitedly. She grabbed Sara's hand and dragged her over to the bulletin board where a very sparkly gift bag lay propped against the wall.

"You have to guess what it is first!"

"Is it a book?" Sara asked. Jonas liked to joke that she'd have read each book in the library at least five times each by the time she turned 20. In truth, it was probably a distinct possibility.

"No!" Amata told her, gleeful that her friend had not guessed what the gift was. She shoved the bag into the birthday girl's hands. "Open it!"

Sara did as told, carefully extracting the balled up tissue paper, smoothing and flattening it out and then laying it carefully on the table next to her. James couldn't help but be amused by this: he saw his tendency toward scientific precision in her more and more everyday.

She pulled a well-loved issue of the ever-popular _Grognak the Barbarian_ from the depths of the sparkly bag and shook it in a spasm of excitement.

"Thanks, Amata!"

"It's Issue #14 too. I know you'd been wanting that one for ages, and I finally found it!"

James made to go over to his daughter, but the Overseer stepped up and laid a hand on her shoulder. She shrunk away from it instinctively. She had always been aware of the Overseer's general dislike and mistrust of her and her father, but she did not know the reason. James wished he could tell her. Someday, he would.

"Now that you're ten, you can truly begin life as a productive citizen of Vault 101. You will receive your first work assignment tomorrow. Also…"

Overseer Almodovar made an impatient gesture at Stanley Armstrong who scuttled forward and handed over a sizeable hunk of metal. The Overseer reached down, grabbed Sara's arm and connected the Pip-Boy 3000 onto her wrist. James felt something inside of him break…was it hope? His little girl was being handcuffed to this place. Each day he waited, she became more and more entangled in its prison. But he simply could not leave her…not while she was still a child.

"You take good care of that now," the Overseer told her. "It's an older model, but that doesn't mean it's worth any less."

"It's the most reliable model out there, in my opinion," Stanley told her. "I reckon you could drop a bomb on it and it would still work…As a matter of fact, I know you could." Overseer Almodovar shot the man a dangerous look, and Stanley backed away. Sara was still staring up at the Overseer in horror.

"How about some cake?" James interjected. His daughter snapped out of her terrified daze at the sound of his voice.

"Mr. Armstrong, will you show me up to work my Pip-Boy?" she asked. Stanley smiled at her, visibly delighted by her polite tone. He was a kind individual, but his occupation was less than glamorous. As a result, he had grown used to being treated rudely. He bent down to her level and began to show her how to work the buttons around the edges.

James headed over to the bar and nodded at Andy to cut the cake that Jonas' grandmother had baked for the occasion.

"Certainly, sir!" the robot cried happily. The spinning blade on one of his long extensions whirred loudly to life. James saw the disaster about to unfold three seconds before it did. He opened his mouth to protest but too late…Andy had brought the spinning blade down onto the cake. Blue and purple icing sprayed everywhere as Andy accidentally dislodged a sizeable chunk of the cake. In a panic, the robot stopped his whirring blade quite suddenly, and the hunk of cake flew across the cafeteria and narrowly avoided hitting Officer Gomez in the face. To James' relief, Sara began to laugh.

"I'm so terribly sorry, sir!" Andy practically screamed. "I do seem to have ruined the cake!"

"It's okay, Andy," James told the robot.

"I'm terribly, terribly sorry!" Andy continued to cry.

Hoping to salvage some aspect of this birthday, James sidled over to the intercom and paged the basement.

"'Sup, doc?" Jonas's voice crackled through it a few seconds later.

"Are you about ready?"

"Uh…yup. Send her down whenever you want. Did you take the ammo this morning? I can't find it."

"I've got it. Thanks a lot, Jonas. I'll send her down in a little while. The cake is a no-go."

"What happened to it?"

"Andy."

"Oh, geez!" Jonas laughed. "I eagerly await the birthday girl's arrival."

"Ow, don't you hit me!" A shrill voice sounded from the other side of the cafeteria, and James turned just in time to see Sara land a punch directly on Butch's right cheekbone.

"That's enough!" Officer Gomez pulled the squabbling children apart. "Butch, sit down! Leave the girl alone on her birthday!"

"She punched me!"

"You hit me first!" Sara protested. "I was defending myself!"

"_Enough_!"

Butch plopped back down into his seat, clearly defeated. Sara glared at him as she took out one of Old Lady Palmer's sweetrolls from her pocket and handed a piece to Amata.

James felt his mouth fall open in delighted shock. So Sara had finally done what he, as an adult, could not and showed Butch that he could not always win. The rest of the party seemed to have recovered, but for James, the aftermath of the moment lingered. So many times his little girl had come back from school crying or sporting a new bruise, and he'd held her and lied to her that it would be all right. But that punch…that was a streak of independence. That was what he'd longed to see: a hint that Sara would do just fine on her own.

At this realization, however, he grew sad. He certainly wanted to return to Project Purity as soon as humanly possible, but with each passing day he realized how heart-breakingly difficult it would be to leave his daughter. Were the remnants of Project Purity still at the Memorial? The red-haired ten year old now giggling as Stanley Armstrong plunked a baseball hat down onto her head was the only part of Catherine he was absolutely positive still existed. He wanted to take her with him so badly…to free her ever-inquiring mind and show her that this prison was not all there was to life. There was a vast Wasteland just above the surface, and though fraught with danger and the scum of humanity, it was beautiful in its own right. It served as a stark reminder that the planet would recover even after a nuclear apocalypse. Earth would go on, even when humans no longer existed…

And James was positive that, given a few more years, Sara would undoubtedly surpass him in intelligence. Just as soon as he'd established that it was safe…that the Project's findings remained in tact…he'd come back to the Vault and bring her with him. He'd bring Jonas too. They all deserved so much more than this.

But, for now, she was still only ten, and he was excited to give her her birthday gift. He approached her from behind, bent down and grabbed her around the waist. She squealed delightedly and turned to face him.

"Hey kiddo. Why don't you head down to the basement soon? Jonas and I have a birthday gift to give you."

"Really?"

"You bet, little lady." He gave her Pip-Boy a tap. "I'm very proud of you, sweetheart. I can't believe you're already ten."

"I don't like the Pip-Boy," she confessed in a whisper. "I mean, it's cool, but it feels weird on my arm. It's kind of heavy."

"You'll get used to it fairly quickly." James knew that, at least from his viewpoint, this was a lie. Trying to carry an infant around with the newly attached hunk of metal had proven quite a challenge. Perhaps, as a ten-year-old child, she would adapt more quickly. "It's sleeping on it that proves the most difficult."

"Do you think they recycle these, Daddy? Like take someone's once they've died, clean it, and give it to another person?"

"I…I don't know. Why?"

"I always hoped I'd get Mommy's old Pip-Boy." Sara surveyed her model carefully. "Do you think it's hers?"

James choked on his words. Would there ever be a moment when this little girl did not cease to amaze him?

"Well, whether it is or it isn't, I know she'd be very proud of you too." He gave her a gentle, little push toward the door. "Now, go on and meet Jonas in the basement!"

"Okay!" Sara scurried out into the hallway, running a little lopsided with the newly added weight to her right arm.

James gave her a few minutes head start. He checked and double-checked that the BB gun's ammunition still rattled in his lab coat's pocket. Beatrice Armstrong sauntered into the cafeteria and called out to him,

"You have such a lovely daughter, Dr. Fairchild! I just gave her her birthday poem."

Fighting back the mad urge to laugh at the idea of a birthday poem from Beatrice, James smiled at her. He made a mental note to ask Sara how she'd navigated that tricky territory. What a clever girl she kept proving herself to be.

On his way out into the hallway, he chanced a glance back at Butch. The little brat sat sulkily nursing an impressive bruise that was blossoming from his cheekbone right where Sara had landed the punch. Doctor and bully's eyes met for a second. James grinned at him, just a tad smugly. Butch quickly looked away in shame.

"There's more where that came from, Butch," he muttered to himself as he left the cafeteria. "I guarantee it."

James stayed hidden behind the doorframe as he listened to the conversation he and Jonas had rehearsed unfold.

"What're you doing in here?" Jonas demanded in his best attempt at sternness. He performed well. "You know kids aren't allowed down in the lab."

The Overseer had recently instated a rule that kids were forbidden from being in the basement when Jonas and Sara's antics (involving a gurney propelled by a small engine they had built together) loudly ended the life of several test tubes. James had to admit the sound with which the tubes exploded, as the gurney crashed into them was quite magnificent, but the Overseer did not take this same point of view.

"I just…my Dad told me to meet you down here…"

"Relax, kiddo. I'm joking with you! Your dad and I have made you a little birthday surprise. It took a lot of work and ages to find the spring the loader needed, so I hope you think it's pretty cool."

"A surprise?" Sara asked. "What kind of surprise?"

"Here, I'll give you a hint," James said, stepping out from the hallway and into the basement. Sara started at the sound of his voice and wheeled around to look at him. He retrieved the box of ammunition from his lab coat pocket and held it out to her.

She took it very gingerly and pulled the box close to her nose to examine it. Both realization and confusion dawned on her face at the same time.

"Ammunition?" she asked. "Isn't that for guns?"

Jonas walked over to the safe hidden under one of the lab desks and carefully extracted the BB gun from it. He made sure to shut and lock it quickly. Only he and James knew it contained more than a reconstructed BB gun: it also contained small-scale Project Purity experiments. James had finally cracked about a year ago and confessed their continuation to his colleague. To his delight, Jonas demanded to help in any way he could.

"Whoa!" Sara cried, taking in the sight of the gun balanced on Jonas' outstretched hands. "Is it really for me?"

"You bet it is," Jonas told her. "Go ahead and take it!"

The ten year old reached out cautiously and took the small gun into her hands. She seemed simultaneously terrified of and awed by it.

"I won't always be around to protect you," James said, swallowing the lump that arose in his throat as he spoke these words. The continuation of the Project Purity experiments convinced him more and more everyday that he must someday return to the vital work he, Catherine, and Madison began over a decade ago. As much as he hated the idea of being away from his daughter, he knew he must begin preparing the both of them for his departure one day. "So you need to learn how to look out for yourself."

Sara seemed oblivious to the hidden meaning behind these words and looked expectantly up at him.

"Can I shoot it?" she asked excitedly.

"Only down here in the basement," James told her firmly. "We'll keep the gun down here too. It will be our little secret, okay?"

Sara nodded in comprehension.

"Your dad and I happened to see a Radroach scuttling around down here this morning," said Jonas. "We also set up a target system for you to practice on. Let's see how well you shoot."

They made their way into the adjoining room. It was considerably darker and always smelled damp. Crisscrossing pipes leaked steam loudly. James thought of a time when Sara feared all the noises in this room and refused to enter. He couldn't help but feel a little sad for how quickly she was growing up.

"You see those three targets?" he asked, bending down to her level. "See if you can hit each one. They will swing back if you get a shot on the target."

He showed her how to load the ammo into the chamber and reminded her that she must use extreme caution. Her gift was still a gift, but it was no toy.

She fired at the center target and missed wildly. The round clanged loudly as it ricocheted around some long abandoned pipes in the back of the room. Sara instinctively ducked even though there was no danger. Jonas began to laugh, though not unkindly. Sara grinned sheepishly at him.

"It's okay," James said. "Try again. Take a deep breath and let it out before you shoot. It will help steady your hand and your aim."

Sara repositioned the BB in her hands, took in a deep breath, and let it out in a slow whistle. She pulled the trigger slowly and the round fired.

It did not hit the actual target by any means but smashed reassuringly into the red metal bar that connected the target to the pipe. It gave a feeble wobble, and Sara gave a loud cheer.

"I almost hit it!" she cried. "Did you see that, Daddy?" Both men grinned at her rampant enthusiasm.

"I did see it!" James replied. "That was much better. Keep trying, and I know you'll get it!"

It took half the box of ammunition James had set aside for that day until Sara hit the target on the left. Judging by her look of surprise, he wasn't entirely sure that this happened by good shooting so much as by chance, but he cheered loudly nonetheless.

And in the end, Jonas used both of his shoes, one on each hand, to beat the scuttling Radroach to death while Sara squealed dramatically and James bent double in laughter at the sight.


	7. Future Imperfect

"Breathe out."

Sara did as told and the reassuring mixture of her perfectly regular heartbeat mingled with the air leaving her lungs sounded in James' stethoscope. He would never tell his daughter, but he had always harbored a fear that the cardiac arrest that killed her mother was indicative of a genetic heart problem. However, today, like every day in the past that he had checked it, every aspect of her respiratory system sounded wonderfully healthy. Catherine's death had been a tragic but completely unpreventable event caused by a long and difficult labor. He wasn't sure whether this comforted or worried him further.

"Everything sounds just fine," he told her, setting the stethoscope around his shoulders and surveying her for several seconds. "I'm proud of you, you know. It's a big day."

"Don't remind me," Sara groaned. "I already feel like I'm going to throw up from nerves as is, Dad."

"Look, you didn't hear it from me, but the G.O.A.T isn't a big deal-"

"It determines my _entire _future!"

"A future which ultimately is up to you. Yes, you have to take the test, but you can talk to Mr. Brotch and get what you want."

"I want to work with you. You already taught me first aid."

James grinned and laid a hand on her shoulder. He could think of few things more ideal than the opportunity to work alongside his daughter for the next few years. Then, once he left, she would be safe. The Overseer would never risk injuring the Vault doctor.

"That would be wonderful, honey. But you still have to take the test."

"I know," she replied, hopping down from the examination table. "Do you think I really can choose to work with you and Jonas?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he joked, winking.

"I just don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life doing something I hate. I know we're all born here, but do we all have to die in the Vault? I've been reading about radiation in the library, and I think the levels outside wouldn't be nearly high enough to inhibit human life and growth. Surely, sometime soon we could go out?"

James wanted to scream "YES!" then tell her everything of the wonders beyond that ten-ton steel door that locked them inside the Vault and take her with him and flee into the light at that very moment. But he could not. The less she knew when he left in the next two or three years, the better off she would be.

"It won't do you any good to go around asking questions like that," he told her. "You especially don't want the Overseer to hear you say that."

"Yeah, I guess," Sara conceded, sadly. "Well, I've got to go take this stupid test."

He reached out and pulled her into a hug. The top of her head now came up to his lips, and he kissed the mass of wavy red hair. He could not believe she was sixteen years old. But now was not the time for parental nostalgia for the times when he could hold her entire nine-pound body in his arms. She had a test to take, and he had appointments to keep.

"I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

He was so grateful that Sara's teenage years had not changed her into some raging, hormonal young adult he did not know. He had watched several of his fellow parents struggle to understand and manage their unruly teenagers: the Gomezes had helplessly watched Freddie spiral into one of the worst cases of Vault Depressive Syndrome James had seen or read about in his time in the Vault, the Hannon's son Paul had joined Butch's little gang which was causing far more trouble than anyone could have imagined, and Amata was prone to screaming outbursts around her father. James suspected this last case had more to do with the Overseer's tyranny than Amata, but he did not voice this opinion to anyone but Jonas.

Sara, with the exception of a few moody spells, had remained a levelheaded kid. He was also grateful that she not only tolerated but also sought out his affection. To most of her peers, the idea of hugging a parent in public (or at all) seemed worse than weathering the nuclear apocalypse of 2077 outside of a Vault. Sometimes he worried that she was not becoming independent enough, but who did she have to spend time with other than him and Jonas? Amata had slowly been drifting away from her in the past few years, and Freddie was only a good companion when he wasn't lying in bed immobilized by depression.

"Go ace that G.O.A.T," he told her, ruffling her ponytail, as he broke apart their hug.

"See you in a little while."

Luckily, James only had a few minutes between Sara's departure and his appointment with Stanley who had contracted a nasty head cold, so he was left with very little time to worry about how the test was going. After sending the technician back to his quarters with some decongestants and strict orders to take it easy for a few days, he used the intercom to ask Jonas down in the basement if he would like to join James and Sara for a post-G.O.A.T. lunch. Jonas agreed to meet them, and so James was left to sit and worry.

He wasn't sure why she was so worried. The test was a joke, and everyone in the Vault knew it. If Sara wanted to be his assistant in the clinic, then she would be. Still, he hoped the G.O.A.T wouldn't tell her she would be better off as a garbage collector and crush her spirits. She was bright but easily discouraged.

He tried pacing, rearranging the contents of his desk drawers, even sterilizing his medical tools twice but nothing seemed to take his mind off his daughter just down the hallway in a classroom.

Needless to say, he was, however, not desperate enough to be grateful when there was a knock on the clinic door and Ellen DeLoria traipsed in. He was caught completely off guard though when he saw that she was doing something he'd never seen her do before: she was crying. Genuine concern rose in him.

"Ellen, what's wrong?" he asked.

"I'm so worried about all this trouble Butch is getting into!" she cried, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. Her words were clear and articulate. She was clearly sober and truly concerned. "I don't know what to do with him! He keeps getting into fights and picking on everyone."

"Here, come and sit." James laid a hand on her shoulder and guided her toward a chair. She plopped pitifully down into it as he pulled up a chair so he could sit across from her.

"I know I haven't done so great by him," confessed Ellen, "but I just feel like he's completely out of control at this point. I feel so helpless to fix the situation."

James tried to find words of comfort but could not think of any that wouldn't sound false. He could not reassure her that all kids were difficult as adolescents when his own daughter was not nor could he reassure her that none of this was her fault because all of it was.

"You're so lucky to have Sara," Ellen continued. "She's so kind and smart, just like you."

"Thank you," James replied, unable to come up with another response.

"Do you think he'll grow out of it?"

"I'm sure he will," James lied. He had absolutely no idea, but he supposed now was not the time to tell her this fact.

"I just feel so helpless," she repeated. "I've done everything wrong."

"No…" James began, but he could not bring himself to tell her she was not at fault.

"Do you think I could bring him in to talk to you? I know he and Sara have had problems in the past, but it would mean the world to me if you could try to find out what's bothering him. He won't talk to me at all."

James thought that he would actually rather eat his own arm than sit down and pretend to give a shit about Butch and his multitude of problems, but Ellen was so, so pitiful…

"Of course I'll try," he told her. "I don't know that I'll have any luck, but I'll try."

"Oh, thank you!"

And suddenly Ellen launched herself across the space between them and attached herself to his lips. His mind reeled and screamed NO, this was wrong and disgusting, but damn he had not touched a woman in almost seventeen years. The outline of Ellen's torso against her Vault jumpsuit was so perfectly delicate. If he could just touch her for two seconds…

Catherine and Sara both came flooding into his mind with sickening rapidity. It didn't matter that Catherine was long dead. She was still the only one for him. And the beautiful daughter she'd left him deserved far better than a father who cavorted around with the mother of the bully who beat her up on a regular basis.

"NO!" The roar left his mouth with considerable force, and he literally shoved her away from him. She staggered before turning to stare at him in horror. "How _dare _you come in here trying to get sympathy from me before you _throw _yourself at me. Have some dignity!"

"Catherine's dead, James!" Ellen shouted back at him. "And no matter how hard you try to deny it, she isn't coming back! What else do you have down here?"

"I have my daughter! And the joy she brings me every single day is worth more than any sleazy fling with you. GET. OUT."

He had never been this angry before. His own rage terrified him. He had never felt this way about anything or anyone, not even at the unfairness of Catherine's death or at Butch for punching Sara.

Ellen left in a huff as James fled into the sanctuary of his bedroom and slid the door shut behind him.

"I'm so sorry," he bawled to the photo of Catherine on his bedside cabinet. "I wish it was you here. I wish I'd died instead. Sara would be so much better off with you to look after her."

He had to go. He had to go now and finish the work at Project Purity. Sara would do better on her own than with a sorry excuse for a father like him.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap._

"Dad?"

_Tap-tap-tap-tap._

He became aware that someone was knocking on his door and opened his eyes. His arm lay outstretched in an awkward position, his palm rested against the photo frame. When had he fallen asleep?

"Dad? Are you okay? Can I come in?"

James shook himself awake and tried to compose his face.

"Of course you can." The door slid open and Sara stepped in, looking very concerned.

"Are you okay? I had to knock for a while. I was about to override the lock and barge in here."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, I must have fallen asleep. I was so worried about your test that I couldn't think of anything else to do." A wide grin broke out on Sara's face.

"Well, you didn't need to worry. I'm officially your new assistant!"

Genuine joy spread through him, replacing, at least momentarily, all the feelings of guilt and self-hatred.

"That's wonderful. I'm so proud of you, honey."

Sara came over and sat down on the edge of his bed.

"Dad, you've been crying. Your eyes are all red and puffy."

"What? Oh no, I've just been sleeping."

"Don't lie. My eyes do the exact same thing when I cry." She gave him a weak grin. "We get more alike each day, don't we?"

"I guess we do."

"Were you missing Mom?"

"Yes." It was only half a lie.

"I think Mom's really proud of you," she told him. "You're the best doctor this Vault's ever had, and you're the best dad in the whole world."

"You think so?"

"I know so. I don't know why you doubt yourself so much. I wouldn't have anything without you."

"I wouldn't have anything without you either." It was true. She was everything. He had been a fool in a fit of emotion. He could not leave her yet. She had to be trained as a doctor, and the very thought of leaving her brought the familiar ache back into his chest.

"As much as I'd love to sit here and be all mushy with you, Dad, I'm absolutely starving."

James laughed in spite of himself.

"Why don't you page Jonas down in the basement and have him meet us for lunch then? We'll celebrate the new addition to our team."

"Do you think I'll be good at being your assistant?"

"Are you kidding? I'm getting the best assistant this Vault has ever had. Just don't tell Jonas I said that."

So Sara stepped out into the apartment to talk to Jonas via the intercom. James took another moment to rub the red out of his eyes and straighten his lab coat. He realized they'd have to find one to fit Sara too and pride swelled in him again.

The time for him to go was soon. But the proud smile Sara shot him as she talked to Jonas reminded him that he couldn't go now. Not just yet.


	8. Out

James pressed his forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose where a dull throb was threatening to turn into a full-blown headache. A bunch of papers were spread across the entirety of his desk, each one informing him of a different thing that needed to be done. At the moment, he was focusing on a series of calculations from the previous evening's small-scale experiments on the water chip. He'd read the number "17" at least three times over when the sound of a knock crashed through his thoughts.

He jumped visibly as his heart rate shot up. He placed a hand to his chest in shock and glanced up. Sara stood in the doorway, looking like a like a terrified young child in blue pajamas, not a seventeen year old young woman.

"If this is a bad time…" she said.

"Not at all," he told her. "I was just catching up on some work."

As he looked at her a few seconds longer he realized the look of terror on her face ran deeper than a childish fear of interrupting a parent at work. The blood was draining from her face, and she kept curling and uncurling her hands into fists.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

"Dad, I'm gay."

He was simultaneously shocked and not at all surprised. His first, and perhaps most irrational, thought was that at least he didn't have to worry about threatening any touchy-feely boys.

"Okay," he replied, unsure of what she needed to hear him say. He would tell her anything to quell the terror in her eyes.

"Do you hate me?" she asked, addressing the question to her feet because she suddenly seemed unable to look at him.

Her words cut him like a knife. He knew she had not meant them to hurt but rather to express a truly deep-set fear. But the idea that she could ever even _dream_ that he didn't love every bit of her, from the top of her red hair to the tips of her toes, made him want to die.

"Do I…honey, how could you even think such a thing?" A second of silent understanding passed between them. James rose to his feet, and Sara ran into his arms.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she sobbed into his shoulder.

"Don't apologize," he insisted, kissing the top of her head and pulling her into the tightest hug he'd ever given. "Don't you ever apologize for who you are. I love every damn aspect of you, Sara, and don't ever forget that."

He placed a gentle hand on her back and swayed slightly on the spot, rocking her just as he'd done seventeen year earlier in the long nights they'd both cried: she because of a demand for formula and he because of Catherine's absence. She shook as she bawled, half from lingering terror at telling her father the truth and half from relief that she'd finally told someone.

"I wanted to tell you ages ago," she said, several minutes later. "But I couldn't. I thought you'd be mad, and I don't want to disappoint you. Or Mom…"

"I know for a fact that your mother would be prouder than you can imagine." Sara sniffled but did not protest, and he took this as a sign to continue. "Let's see, you're seventeen years old and already on track to become this Vault's next doctor. You can mend broken limbs just as well, if not better, than your old man. You can figure out math equations I didn't understand until I was thirty. You're a sincerely kind person. And, so you like women. Hell, I do too. Personally, I think you lucked out, and the only men you'll have to deal with are me and Jonas."

She laughed into his shoulder which caused her to hiccup, and that set him off laughing too.

"You could come in here and tell me you'd killed everyone in this Vault, and I'd still love you, sweetheart. Granted, I'd be mad, but I'd still love you. Got it?"

"Yeah…thanks, Dad." She made no motion to indicate that she wished to be let go of, so he held onto her and thought.

He supposed, when it came down to it, he wasn't surprised much at all. There had been indications: the way Sara doted on Amata, how she'd asked if two people of the same gender could have sex when she was only nine. He'd chalked it up to her being an exceptionally kind-hearted and intuitive girl (although, he admitted to himself, he was, perhaps, a bit biased). But this made sense too.

"Is it Amata?" he asked.

"Yeah," she admitted, still speaking into his shoulder. "It's always been Amata."

"Hey James, I finally got those files you asked for! The computer's been on the fritz lately, so that's why it took me so…oh…sorry." Jonas stopped abruptly in the doorway, a computer chip in hand and his glasses askew with excitement. He strongly resembled a mad scientist.

"No, it's okay," Sara told him, pulling free of her father's hug and wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"What's going on, kiddo?"

She glanced back at James, as though asking his approval. He nodded, knowing Jonas would understand.

"Uh…I'm a lesbian."

"Oh, cool," Jonas said. His expression did not even change, and James silently thanked him for this lack of reaction. "Should I…congratulate you?"

Sara laughed, and her father was glad to hear the sound of it echo off the Vault walls.

"No, that's okay."

"Okay. Hey, did you want to see these files too? They're from about 85 years ago. This lady was out of her mind. She was convinced dead people lived in the walls so she went around 'bleaching' them out with Sugar Bombs."

"Definitely!"

Sara sidled into her usual place, hunched over the glowing computer screen, squished between Jonas and her father. She was exceptionally adaptable. That would make everything easier in the future…

James put his hand on her face and smiled at her.

"You know you've always got Jonas and I, honey."

He could not admit to himself that he was lying to her, and that soon he wouldn't be in this Vault at all.


	9. Life to Lose

"Don't mean to rush you, Doc, but I'd feel better if we got this over with…"

"Okay. Go ahead. Goodbye. I love you."

Jonas pressed the Stop button and extracted the holodisk from the recorder. James turned away, unwilling to let his colleague see the tears that sprang to his eyes the moment the words "I love you" left his lips. Something inside his very soul ached as he stared at the Vault's grayish-green walls and listened to Jonas shuffling around somewhere behind him.

"What do you want me to do with it?" Jonas finally asked, stepping up to James' side. "Were you going to leave it on her bedside table?"

"No, I need you to keep it. Give it to her when I'm long gone. Like I said, it's best if the Overseer can blame everything on me. If he asks her she won't have to lie when she says she doesn't know anything."

"Right." Jonas slid the holotape into one of his many lab coats' pockets and patted it to indicate it would be safe in his keeping. "You sure you're doing the right thing, Doc?"

"No." He felt as though he'd never been more unsure about anything in his entire life. Of course, he'd always entertained the notion in the back of his mind, but it was always "In the future…when Sara's older…"

But then he thought of Catherine and how he'd laid in bed with her nearly two decades ago and placed his hands on her growing belly and contemplated in disbelief that the human being growing in there was _their child_. In those moments, that seemed as though they were ripped from another man's life, they had both know that all of Project Purity's work was for that child. And when she'd finally been born and he could count her toes and touch her button nose and finally call her "Sara" instead of just "the baby", he'd never been surer of Project Purity's mission. That was until Catherine called out for him and he'd watched the life drain out of his beautiful wife despite his frantic efforts to save her.

And again he thought of that tiny baby, all grown up now, who he'd rocked to sleep under the Vault's strange fluorescent lighting, whose bed he had checked under for monsters, who he handed a BB gun on her tenth birthday, who he'd watched grow into a stunning young woman who was so much like her mother and yet so much like him too.

Plus, he hadn't been out into the Wasteland for nineteen years. He didn't know the condition of the Jefferson Memorial. Had the work been saved? Was Madison Li still alive? He was taking a huge risk, and he and Jonas both know it.

"When are you leaving?" Jonas' question brought him crashing back to hard, cold reality.

"As soon as possible." No point in dragging this out…

Yet he had never felt more tethered to this place…to the friend standing beside him…to the daughter now sleeping in the apartment he shared with her.

"You'll take good care of her, won't you?" James choked on his own words. "Once I've…left."

"Of course," Jonas replied. "Although I hardly think she needs taking care of anymore."

"Maybe not," James said in an effort to convince himself of the truth of these words. His work as a father was over now…he could return to being a scientist…right?

"I'm gonna miss you," said Jonas.

"You'll have Sara to work with you."

"Yeah…"

Jonas cleared his throat loudly.

"Are you going to go see her?"

"I don't know that I can," James confessed.

"Don't you think you owe it to her? I don't want to have to tell her you ran out of here without so much as a backward glance. Go see your daughter, James."

James nodded and turned to go, but he found his feet were glued to the spot.

"I'll be back for you both once I've gotten the project off the ground again," he said. "You would both be a major asset to the cause…you already have been." He turned back to face his friend and held out his hand. "How about we shake to seeing each other again someday?"

Both men glanced at one another and moved to embrace instead. It was awkward; neither seemed sure how to properly go about it, but James knew his promise meant more cemented by that instead of just a handshake.

"You go save the world, Doc," Jonas told him, thumping him on the back once as he pulled away. "I'll see you soon."

James nodded, stuck his hands in his lab coat pockets and exited the basement. The hallways were blissfully quiet; he glanced down at his Pip-Boy and was startled to discover it was nearly 4 in the morning. He hadn't realized how long he'd been in the lab.

"Late night, James?" Officer Gomez approached him from the other side of the hall and gave a friendly grin.

"I didn't realize how late it was," James answered honestly. "Time has a way of getting away from me."

"I know the feeling, Doc. Listen, I'm glad I caught up with you. I wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"For your daughter. Pepper and I really appreciate how nice she's been to Freddie lately, ever since his Vault Depressive Syndrome worsened…"

"Thank her instead," James said, pride swelling in him because of his child's unfailing kindness. "She's an adult now."

"True. They both are. Time's flown, huh?" Gomez clapped a hand to James' shoulder. "Well, obviously you did something right by her, and thanks for that. Be careful on your way back. A few radroaches have gotten in tonight."

"I will. Good night, Herman."

"You take care, James."

Sara's room was dark when he entered their living quarters a few minutes later. She'd left her door open again, even though he'd told her countless times to keep it closed at night in case some radroaches got in. Under any other circumstances, he would have been irritated, but tonight he was glad she's left it open.

He peeked into her darkened room and made out her sleeping figure in the far corner. She'd flung the covers off in the stuffy August heat, and her blue pajamas pants had risen above her knees. She had always been a deep sleeper but a fitful one at that. When she was younger and she'd climbed into his bed because of nightmares he had often ended up on the floor to avoid being kicked repeatedly. He always teased her about it, but, secretly, he'd never minded.

He stooped down and pulled the tangled sheets off of the floor, then laid them lightly across her again. She stirred, half-conscious, and mumbled.

"Dad?" The paternal part of him prevented him from not answering. He laid a hand on the top of her head and admired her red locks.

"I'm here. You just left your door open again. Go back to sleep, honey."

"Mmkay."

He had to tell her one last time. His biggest hope was that one day they would be reunited; that he would come back to the Vault and bring her into the light and show her a basin of purified water. But the Wasteland was a dangerous place. It made no promises, and he couldn't either.

"I love you so much, honey."

"Loveyoutoodad," she slurred in her sleep.

An hour later, as the Vault door slid shut behind him and the early morning sun burned his retinas through his protective eye gear, James sat on the nearest dust-blown rock and wept.


	10. Dr Li

Breathing hard, James leaned heavily on a rusty beam for a few seconds. He glanced up, squinting through the glare of the sun, and couldn't help but smile at the familiar sight of the aircraft carrier. It was, perhaps, a little more weathered than when he'd last seen it, but the sight of its silver towers, stacked on top of one another almost like child's toys, were a welcome sight.

The last time he'd traversed the Wasteland he had held a small child in his arms. This made the going a little more difficult, certainly, but two Brotherhood guards had accompanied him. He had also been 19 years younger. There certainly was nothing like three stories of steep inclines to remind him that he was now over 50.

He pressed a sweaty finger to the button on the intercom. He could not see, but he certainly felt, the eyes of whoever was on guard immediately sweep over him through a pair of binoculars from somewhere on the carrier deck.

"What's your business?" a gruff voice barked through the static.

"I'm here to see Dr. Madison Li. She and I are old colleagues."

A pause followed this statement, as the guard likely contemplated these words.

"Okay," a reply finally came through. "I'm extending the bridge. Stand back."

James regained his balance and took a few steps back. He was careful to avoid treading on the beggar sleeping nearby.

The bridge gave an almighty groan of protest before it began to crank out toward him. James supposed it didn't get much use anymore: the only people he'd met outside of Megaton and the Galaxy News Radio station were not civilized enough to enter Rivet City.

He stepped onto the bridge as soon as it creaked to a halt in front of him. The wind was fierce up here, and he glanced uneasily down at the radioactive waters of the Potomac below him. Even if he was successful in completing Project Purity and purifying the basin, no one would survive a fall like that.

He was glad to reach the other side; despite the unfriendly look the guard was giving him. The man wielded a 10mm SMG menacingly. James tried not to hold it against the man; he was simply doing his job.

"I don't want any trouble from you, got it? We had a slew of slavers almost get in here last week, and I won't stand for it."

"I'm not here to enslave or harm anyone," James assured him.

"Hmmph. Dr. Li's in the science lab. Just follow the signs."

"Thank you."

James' first thought, as he pushed open the heavy door marked "Stairwell", was that he would like to show Sara this place. She could skip Megaton and the downtown ruins, but this place…it was oddly beautiful in it's own, strange sort of way. And, more importantly, it was one of the most secure locations in the Wasteland. He knew she would enjoy touring one of the mysterious boats she'd read about in old books but had never seen in real life.

The sheer size of the ship was mind-boggling. James seemed to have forgotten in twenty years of Vault living how gigantic the world could seem. He ran a hand over the steel railing as he traversed a set of stairs and headed in the direction a sign labeled "Science Lab" pointed him.

His thoughts turned to Madison. He had been thinking about her a lot since leaving the Vault, repeatedly rehearsing what he would say to her once they met again. He knew she would likely to be bitter. The last time they'd seen one another ended with her storming out of the room and slamming the door behind her after he insisted he must leave and take the baby to a Vault. She had accused him of abandoning the project.

He knew he'd done the right thing, but Madison Li was an exceptional grudge-holder. The one time he'd seen her and Catherine fight was terrifying. His wife was ready to let the argument go after a few hours, but Madison held out for a solid week before speaking to her friend again.

How could she not want to continue the project though? Yes, it had taken a nearly twenty year hiatus, but James' short time back out in the Wasteland had convinced him more than ever of the importance of their work. More people showed signs of radiation sickness than he could ever remember. And even though the project had lost Catherine it had gained two more great minds: Jonas and Sara.

A young girl scurried past him, and he thought fondly of his own little girl tucked safe back in the Vault. He would not allow himself to imagine how betrayed she felt right now. He knew he had hurt her deeply. But that would all change once he went back and brought her out into the light. She would know he had only wanted to keep her safe, know that she meant so very much to him that he could not risk losing her too.

James came to another heavy door and shoved it open with great effort. The sign above it marked the area as the science lab.

He was suddenly nervous. His stomach twisted up in painful knots simply at the idea of seeing his old friend after so long. Hopefully she had come to understand in their twenty years apart. He briefly entertained the notion that maybe she'd had children of her own and would understand, but the very idea of Madison Li as a mother was entirely laughable.

He glanced down into the science lab from his perch on the stairwell above it. A young brunette woman seemed to be running some tests on what looked like some real vegetables. If growing actual food was what Madison Li had been up to for the past two decades, James was impressed.

He finally caught sight of her, seated and bent over a clipboard. Occasionally she reached up and impatiently tapped a bubbling beaker just to her right before jotting down something else onto her sheet of paper. From here, she seemed remarkably unchanged. Her dark hair was pulled up into a tight bun, exactly the same way she'd worn it nineteen years ago. Her impatience was visible in her repeated tapping on the beaker. He felt relieved that she was so instantaneously recognizable. Perhaps she had not changed too much but just enough to understand the decision he had made for his daughter.

The young brunette inspecting the row of vegetables caught sight of him and smiled politely.

"Hello. Can I help you?" she asked.

"If it's that Horace Pinkerton, you tell him I don't have time for any of his nonsense right now!" Dr. Li hissed without turning away from her work.

"I don't know who it is," the young woman confessed.

"Then I have even less time!"

"Madison, it's me. It's James," he said, carefully coming down the steep stairs to approach her.

She froze, her hand halfway extended out toward the beaker. The young woman glanced curiously at James, wondering how he'd had this effect on her mentor.

Madison slowly stood up, arms locked with one hand still extended toward the beaker and the other's fingers splayed across her clipboard to support herself.

"It's been a long time, Madison," James continued, unsure of what to make of her behavior and a little wary of how she'd frozen up at the sound of his voice. "Too long."

"You son of a bitch."

She whirled around to face him, and her eyes were blazing. He vaguely noticed that twenty years had not left her completely unchanged. Faint wrinkles extended from the corners of her eyes, and she looked more hardened and bitter than he remembered her.

"You think you can just waltz into my lab and pretend that we're old friends meeting up for dinner?"

"Listen, Madison, I know there's a lot we have to talk about-"

"You think?" she interrupted shrilly. "No, James, _you_ listen. I have done just _splendidly _without you for the past twenty years. I haven't heard a damn word from you since you ran off twenty years ago, and you think you can just come in here and expect me to listen to anything you have to say?"

Her words stung. He had expected, even been prepared for, some bitterness and some harsh words. He had not, however, expected that she would want absolutely nothing to do with what he had to say to her.

"I just…" he began pathetically.

"How's that baby of yours, James? All grown up now and of no use to you so you thought you could just abandon her too and come back to me? You sicken me! You discard people when they're no longer of any use to you. It's a damn good thing Catherine died when she did, so she didn't have to face your inevitable abandonment."

"Enough!" James snapped. She could throw all the insults she wanted at him, but he would not have her accuse him of not loving Catherine or his daughter. "You know damn well I wanted nothing more than to stay! But then I would look down at the little girl in my arms, and the thought of losing her too was unbearable. How dare you bring Catherine into this."

This was going terribly. He didn't want to fight. He needed her help, not her animosity.

"Please, Madison." He raised a hand in apology. "I just want you to come back to work with me on Project Purity."

She made a noise of disgust, but he pressed on.

"There's so much we can do, that we _need _to do. There's hardly any purified water left in this entire area. We owe it to the people of the Capital Wasteland to offer them a chance at life!"

"Maybe you owe it to them. When you walked out that day, Project Purity ended. And, as far as I'm concerned, that was for the better. We were fools, James, to think a group of three young scientists could change the world. I don't know what you've been doing down in that Vault, but I'm channeling my abilities into more effective solutions." She gestured violently at the vegetables on the nearby table.

"There's nothing wrong with dreaming, Madison. We _can _do this-"

"Seriously, James, just stop. I don't want to hear it. Catherine's dead, you and I aren't getting any younger, and the Jefferson Memorial is overrun. It's done."

She made to turn away and return to her work with the beaker that was dangerously close to overflowing.

"Do you want to see her?" James asked, in desperation. "She's so much like Catherine."

Madison gazed back over at him. He thought, or perhaps imagined, her features had softened just a little bit.

"You were the first person to ever hold her. Don't you remember?"

"Of course I remember." The venom was gone from her voice. Her hands were shaking.

James reached down into his pocket and pulled out a carefully folded photo. He slowly began to unfold it, cautiously smoothing out the creases. He held the photo, face down, out to Madison. She took it, but did not look at it.

"That picture's hardly a month old. Jonas took it on her birthday. She's nineteen now and smarter than I could ever hope to be." He chuckled. "She's just like her mother."

Hands still shaking, Madison slowly turned the photo over in her hands and peered down at it. Something halfway between a laugh and a sob escaped her lips.

"She's the spitting image of you, James."

"That's what everyone says. She's got Catherine's nose though. Can't you see?"

"She does…and she's still got that red hair."

"I still don't know where it came from. She's training to be the Vault's doctor."

Madison's face hardened again as she continued to look at the photo, and when she spoke again it was more venomous than before.

"And you thought it would be okay to just leave her there? Did you tell her why you were leaving?"

His silence answered her question.

"Of course you didn't, James. You don't care for anyone but yourself and your dreams. You gave up everything for this girl nineteen years ago, but now you're too much of a coward to even stick around to be her father."

"I…though she was old enough…"

"She's nineteen. She's still a child."

Madison shoved the photograph back into his hands.

"I don't want anything to do with you or your project or your purified water. Go back to the Vault where you belong and stick to something for once in your miserable life."

She turned back to her work, and he knew it was hopeless. He was alone in this one.

Six hours later, sporting a busted lip from a scuffle with a Super Mutant, he tossed back a shot of scotch in the Jefferson Memorial and spoke into the recorder.

_"Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me."_


	11. Reunion

"Oh…"

The word left James' mouth of its own accord as he stared in wonder at his new surroundings. The world around him was black and white like the old movies he'd watched with Sara back in the Vault, but it still felt so real! He stretched out his right arm and extended his fingers. A very convincing light breeze rolled over his fingertips. The G.E.C.K. was amazing.

The scientist inside him fought to keep his thoughts rational and on topic, even as he wanted to bounce around like a child on Christmas morning. This breath-takingly realistic virtual reality meant even he had underestimated the G.E.C.K.'s capabilities. Now if he could just find the person in charge of it and convince him to donate it to the cause…He felt as if he could almost reach out and touch a basin of purified water!

"You shouldn't be here," a tiny, high-pitched voice spoke up from behind him. He turned, startled, to find a little girl with a pair of matching bows in her hair who was wearing a pleated dress. She was grinning up at him in what he supposed was meant to be a sweet way, but something about her immediately seemed wrong. There was an edge of cold hatred to her eyes…something that did not belong on the face of a child.

"I'm sorry," James replied, willing himself to act as though nothing was out of the ordinary. He tried to return her smile, but it came out a half-hearted grin. The little girl's toothy smile remained plastered on her face, but the look around the edges of her eyes hardened.

"I'm looking for a Dr. Braun," James continued, unwittingly taking a step away from the child in front of him. She immediately closed the space between them with two little hops that would have been adorable if a normal little girl had done it.

" I'm actually a doctor too. He has something that I need in order to continue working on a project of mine. It's called a G.E.C.K. Do you know where I can find Dr. Braun?"

"Yes."

The voice that came from the little girl's mouth changed pitch in a horrifying manner. It was no longer the high-pitched squeak but a deep growl with a hint of an accent…perhaps German?

"Did you…?" James began, unable to finish his sentence as she continued to smile up at him.

"Won't you play a game with me?" She was speaking in the deep voice again, and James found himself torn between self-preservation and doubt. His instincts told him this was wrong, this was evil; he should knock down this demon and run. But at the same time she looked like a little girl…a creepy one, but a little girl nonetheless. He'd raised his own little girl. He couldn't lay a hand on her.

"I don't think…" James took another few steps back, which the child again counteracted with a succession of quick, little hops. "I really need to find Dr. Braun."

"You did. And he thinks you're boring."

James found himself on the ground, screaming as intense pain shot through his entire body, before he even realized he'd been hit by something. The girl had not done anything. Her stance and her creepy smile remained, but he knew she was the source of the pain.

"Please!" he yelped, crumpling into a heap as the pain exited his body, shooting out of his fingers and toes like invisible flames. "Please, I'm not here to hurt you. I just need to speak to Dr. Braun."

"I've always wanted a puppy," the girl mused, her voice returning to its original, innocent-sounding squeak. "I think I'll call you Doc!"

Life as a dog sucked. James wasn't sure there if there was any other way to phrase it. He could handle the tail, and having people he didn't know pat his head. But he was really missing opposable thumbs.

Time seemed to take on a slower pace in the simulator. He secretly feared being a dog was affecting his cognition, but he could not remember days ever being this long in the real world. This didn't seem to affect the residents of Tranquility Lane, however, and they bumbled about their daily lives in infuriatingly slow motion.

James had quickly discovered that Dr. Braun, or "Betty" as he called his little girl alter ego, was not keen on letting her new pet leave the playground. If he ventured too far from the swing-set the painful fire shot through his veins, and he would run, howling, back to "Betty" just to make it stop.

He thought it was his third or fourth day in the simulator. "Betty" had finally stopped blabbering to him, her voice switching terrifyingly from squeak to growl and back again, and gone off to sit on the swings. She was watching Old Lady Dithers who was once again trying to convince the visibly uncomfortable Rockwells that this wasn't reality. James had tried to yell out to the old woman a few days ago, only to discover that his voice now fit his outward appearance. He could only bark.

He began to pace around the playground, taking care to remain in what "Betty" considered acceptable boundaries. The fact that he kept whacking his new tail painfully on the nearby bushes kept distracting him from his thoughts. Escape seemed impossible. Any attempt would mean instantaneous punishment, and James feared the more he fought "Betty" the worse the pain would grow.

He tried not to think of Sara as he paced, but his despair came crashing down on him in brutal waves. This wasn't supposed to happen…everything had been going so well. The Jefferson Memorial, and with it Project Purity, were remarkably still intact. The notes, the calculations, the holodisks, even the bed he'd slept in with Catherine nearly two decades ago still remained. All he'd needed was the G.E.C.K. and he could have gone back and brought Sara and Jonas out of their underground prison. He would need their help to successfully install the program. It would almost be like old times…James working alongside a good friend and the daughter of the woman he'd loved so deeply.

Except now he trapped in a virtual reality with an insane scientist posing as a little girl who enjoyed toying with "her" inhabitants as if they were playthings. And James was also a man in a dog's body.

He settled under a nearby bush to take some shelter from the burning sun (he still marveled at how convincing the heat felt on his skin…or fur, as it was now). Life with a built-in coat was considerably warmer, and the lack of sweat glands caused him to pant. He fought the need to do so, trying to refuse this animalistic action, but the heat was too much. "Betty" shot him a smug smile as his tongue lolled out of his mouth, and he began to breathe hard.

Maybe if he just slept on it for a while…maybe then an idea would come to him. The heat was lulling him to sleep, and he was drowsy from a lack of shut-eye in the simulation. He could just rest for a few minutes and then surely a brilliant plan of escape would come to him…

He dreamed of Sara. He had hoped against hope that he wouldn't as he closed his eyes and let the soft chirping of a nearby bird (also convincingly real) all but rocked him to sleep. He dreamed he was back in the Vault with her and Jonas, trying to bring them out into the Wasteland but the Overseer was refusing to let them leave.

"Oops, sorry," Sara said in his dream which for some reason caused pain to shoot through his left hand. Why was she apologizing in the dream?

A warm hand on the top of his head brought him back to consciousness…or what he thought was consciousness until he saw the hand belonged to his daughter who was smiling down at him. Would his sleeping mind not cease the torment?

"I didn't see you in the bush there. Is that a good place for a nap?" she continued on, her voice slightly higher than usual, as if she were addressing a small child or animal.

How did she know he had been napping? He was wide-awake in the dream, yelling at the Overseer. Why did her hand feel so warm and soothing on the top of his head?

_No_!

He jolted into full alertness and jumped to his feet (rather clumsily as he now had four of them), which caused the little girl that was Sara to take several wary steps back. He knew it was her…she spoke in Sara's voice. Braun must have changed her appearance. He briefly consoled himself with the fact that at least she wasn't a dog too.

But no, she wasn't here…she _couldn't_ be here! She was back in Vault 101 waiting safely for him to return. She was tending ungrateful patients and joking around with Jonas while he, James, was stuck in this simulator. She simply could not be touching and talking to him right now.

"Sara!" he cried yet to his dismay it came out as nothing more than a high-pitched yelp. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in the Vault! I'm so sorry. I was going to come back and get you. You can't be here. This place is a trap!"

This spiel came out as a barrage of pathetic whining. In desperation, he rushed forward and pressed his snout up against her knees.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Sara reassured him, bending down and giving him a scratch behind the ears (which felt absolutely wonderful as a dog). "I guess you haven't seen my dad either, have you?"

"It's me! I'm right here. Sara, you have to leave this place now!" All of these too came out as nothing more than whimpers.

"Will you play a game with me?" a high-pitched voice spoke up from behind Sara. She turned, not taking her hand off of James' head, to face the little girl.

It was Betty.

James was not letting his daughter get caught up in this twisted fantasy! He shouted a string of expletives at the madman, which, in dog form, translated to him snarling menacingly. Sara quickly withdrew her hand as his hackles raised.

"Maybe later," Sara told the girl. "I came here looking for my dad. I really need to find him."

Dr. Braun shot James a quick, demented glance, and the corners of the little girl's mouth rose complacently.

"Well, maybe I've seen him. What's he look like?" Betty asked.

"He's a scientist. He came here looking for Dr. Braun."

Betty burst into high-pitched, delirious giggles and clapped her hands delightedly.

"Oh, _that's _your daddy? Oh, we're going to have so much fun! Let's play a game!"

Sara took a steadying breath and forced the smile that James had taught her to use around the Overseer on her face.

"Listen, I'd love to play with you but…"

"Make Timmy Neusbam cry, and then you can come back here and we'll talk about your dad."

There were several seconds of complete silence. Sara stared at the scientist in front of her masquerading as a young child.

"Don't listen to her!" James cried (of course, it all still came out as a mixture of barks and whimpers). "Talk to Ms. Dithers! She knows this isn't real like you and me. She has to have some idea of how to fix this!"

Sara ignored her father's attempts to communicate with her.

"I'm not going to make a little kid cry. And why don't you just tell me where my dad is since you clearly know something?"

Betty's eyes narrowed at this defiance. James took several steps forward. He would throw himself in between Dr. Braun and his daughter. He didn't care. Let this madman torture him for all eternity…James would not let any harm come to Sara.

However, to his relief, Betty remained composed and instead repeated her instructions.

"Make Timmy Neusbam cry, and then you can come back here and we'll talk about your dad."

Sara sighed.

"Okay, fine. But if I do this you'll tell me about my dad?"

"Mhmm!"

Sara turned on her heel and started to head in the direction of the Neusbams' home. James ran after her, tripping on the two extra legs he had still not adjusted to the use of.

"Sweetheart, it's me! I'm right here! Please just…"

Sara gave him another friendly pat on the head before stepping off onto the road. Without thinking, James followed her.

Immediately, the familiar pain shot through his body. He tried to fight it, barring his teeth against the agony. He could not…would not allow Sara to go around this twisted neighborhood. He had left her in the Vault, and all but abandoned her. He owed her this much. He owed Catherine this much for their only child.

Yet with each step he fought to take after his daughter the pain worsened. Three feet away from the playground he collapsed, unable to think clearly anymore. His body was on fire. Sara was a smart girl…maybe…maybe she'd figure it out on her own.

"Fuck!" James' frustration and pain slipped out of his mouth in a word he had not used in years. He was almost glad his language had been reduced to that of a dog's, so Sara wouldn't hear him use this word. Then again, he was sure she'd heard worse from Butch and his gang.

He had no choice. He could not walk, so he rolled back toward the playground (what an obedient and clever dog he made, he noted with cynical amusement as the pain lessened).

Still, it was too much. He was no young man anymore.

Whining softly, he slipped into unconsciousness.

An unfamiliar _rata-tat-tat-tat_ startled James back awake. His head felt fuzzy from the pain he'd endured earlier. Where was he? He raised his head and caught sight of his two front paws.

Oh, right. The dog thing…

A tidy, disciplined line of seven soldiers was making its way around the neighborhood. Horrified, James watched them gun down Old Lady Dithers. Poor, little Timmy Neusbam tried to flee, tripping over his tricycle as he tried, and landing flat on his stomach with a bullet in his skull.

_Where was Sara_?

Nothing else mattered, not even his own safety. In a panic, James bolted to his feet (all four of them…damn, how did dogs live like this?) and clumsily teetered out onto the road.

He finally caught sight of her, peeking through the front door of the abandoned house. Her eyes were wide with horror as she watched the massacre.

Both father and daughter watched the soldiers retreat through an opening in the back gate of the Rockwells' house and disappear completely as though they had never been there at all.

James called out to Sara after a few seconds to let her know it was safe. She'd done the right thing…somehow she'd activated the failsafe. All these people were free from Dr. Braun's tyranny. They were allowed to die; a natural process that was about 150 years overdue.

"Damn it!" Betty screamed back from the playground. Her voice had changed from the innocent squeak to the enraged, heavily accented voice of Dr. Braun. "You've ruined everything!"

Sara took several cautious steps out of the abandoned house and seemed to gain some confidence when no soldier appeared to murder her. She came toward Betty and James, her fists clenched.

"Where's my dad?" she demanded.

"You've ruined everything! Now I have no one!"

"Shut up!"

James stared at his daughter in awe. She had never been one to assert herself unless thoroughly provoked. Did she miss him that much?

"Where's my dad?"

"He's been here the whole time," Betty replied, still in the voice of Dr. Braun. "You've just been too dense to see it. The dog. Man's best friend. Except all my friends are gone…"

Sara's gaze fell onto James who, despite how ridiculous it likely made him appear, began to wag his tail. A flicker of unrecognizable emotions flickered across her face before she turned her attention back to Betty.

"Can we go now? My dad and I?"

"Yes, yes, of course, you're free to leave if you like. But you've ruined all my games!"

A door materialized behind Betty. Sara started toward it without hesitation. As she reached out to open it, she glanced back at Betty.

"Enjoy eternity alone," she said and then stepped through the door.

James was suddenly back in the pod. The simulator screen was rising with the top cover. The dim lighting of the Vault's florescent bulbs blinked back at him. He was free!

He reached down to touch his legs and could have laughed out loud in joy to discover he was back down to only two. And the damned tail was gloriously gone!

Grabbing onto the side of the pod for support he stepped out of it into the main pod control room.

"Dad…"

He whirled around to find Sara standing about five paces away from him. It was his little girl; oh, he was so glad to see her! But something was different…there was a hard edge around her eyes. She was not smiling.

"How could you?" she demanded, launching herself at him into a violent hug. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close in to his chest. He didn't know how she had gotten here, but he had never been more relieved to see her in his life.

But before he even had time to truly feel happy at their reunion, she wrenched away from him and glared at him with a look of deep, stinging resentment.

"What the hell made you think you could just leave me like that, Dad?"


	12. Journey to Rivet City

Panting, James struggled to keep up with his daughter who was all but running up the stairs.

"Sara…please…can we talk? It's so good to see you, honey."

She paused to push open the hatch that led from Vault 112 back into the garage.

"I'm not going to talk to you right now, Dad," she said with a forced calm. "Because if I do, I am going to say a lot of things that I don't actually mean."

"Can you at least tell me…ow…" James clutched at a stitch growing in his side as he climbed up onto the garage's concrete floor. "Can you at least tell me where you got this dog?"

A black and gray dog, perhaps some sort of cattle herding breed, was currently attached to Sara's side. It followed her footsteps with unswerving loyalty, and when she reached down to pet the animal or spoke to it, its tail rocked so hard James thought it was in danger of falling over.

"This is Dogmeat," Sara replied, disposing of a mole rat scuttling about in a nearby corner with a neatly aimed shot to the chest. "We found each other in a scrap yard north of here. He and I look out for each other."

"I never pegged you for a dog person," James said, trying to lighten the mood.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't. You were too busy lying to me about everything in my life."

Her words stung deeper than anything he had ever felt. He was not surprised that she felt abandoned, even betrayed, but to actually hear her say these words…He could explain everything, if she would just let him.

"Dogmeat, come here," Sara cooed to the dog. "You're limping. I've got a Stimpack for you, buddy."

James watched as she kneeled down and delivered the boost via syringe to the dog's hindquarters. The dog shook the sting off and gave her a grateful lick on the nose.

Seizing upon his chance, James kneeled down beside her and forced her into a tight hug. His instincts proved right. After a few seconds of futile struggling, Sara burst into tears.

"How could you?" she wailed, clutching his Vault 101 suit as he easily lowered them both into a seated position.

"Honey, I'm so sorry. I went about this whole thing in a terrible way. I just wanted to keep you safe."

"You ruined everything! They killed him, and they would have killed me too if Amata hadn't warned me!"

"Who did they kill?" James asked, strangling tendrils of dread blossoming in his throat.

"Dad, they beat Jonas to death because they thought he knew where you'd gone. Amata warned me, and I was able to escape before they got me too. I saw him…I saw Jonas dead. He was bleeding everywhere and…and he…"

Sara's words dissolved into incoherence. She was trembling against him as if freezing.

James tightened his grip on her and muttered a few half-hearted "Shhh"s, but his thoughts were no longer on his daughter. Jonas was dead.

The man who had been a friend to James long before he'd earned it. The man whose name was the first Sara ever successfully said when she was 16 months old. The man who had risked his security in the Vault to help continue small scale experiments for Project Purity. The man who James had made a promise to; a promise that he would get to see the Wasteland and help with Project Purity. He was dead, and it was all James's fault.

And the very same thing could have happened to Sara. His daughter could be dead right now; the life brutally beaten from her, and he would have spent the rest of eternity in the simulation never knowing. He had almost lost everything. He had almost failed Catherine in every way imaginable.

"I just wanted you to be safe," James spoke aloud. He was half speaking to Sara, and half trying to convince himself that the ends somehow justified the means. "I didn't want this for you—a life out here in this godforsaken warzone."

"How could you ever think I didn't need you anymore? I listened to your journals at the Memorial. I don't care how old I am. I always need you, Daddy."

She had not called him Daddy in at least eight years. He had been so very wrong all along. All those years of planning and behind-the-scenes preparation… he thought he'd been doing her a favor. He should have planned to take her with him. He should have brought both her and Jonas out into the light with him. Except he hadn't. Now Jonas was dead, and the young woman in his arms was crying harder than he'd ever seen her cry.

What had happened to her? There were so many horrors out in the Wasteland. A plethora of awful scenarios flashed through James's mind. His little girl could have been mugged, shot at, stalked, harassed, beaten, and even raped. He could not bear any of those thoughts. If any harm had come to her…

His life purpose was not Project Purity. It had never been Project Purity. Everything he had ever experienced or done had been leading up to the existence of this one girl. Whenever he had bled or cried or worked far into the night it had all been for her. Catherine had died for her. And he had been too blind…too damn blinded by the needs of ungrateful Raiders and mercenaries to see this until she was already broken.

Sara had always been strong for him, whether she had known it or not. She was the only reason he had not withered away from grief after Catherine's death. She had managed to bring a smile to his face, at the mere age of two, after the traumatic demise of Amata's mother. She had never truly hurt him and given him only the unconditional love of a child. And this was how he repaid her…with broken dreams and promises and hearts.

He had to be strong for her now, maybe for the first time in his pathetic life. They could not stay here on the floor of Smith Casey's garage. They had to get to safety in Rivet City. He had to speak to Madison right away.

"Come on, sweetheart," James whispered, stroking her hair. She had stopped shaking. "We can't stay here. We need to go to Rivet City where it's safe."

"Can we talk more once we get there?" Sara asked.

"Of course. I owe you a lot of explanations."

James rose to his feet, pulling her up with him. She seemed unwilling to let go of him, so he gently transferred her grip from his Vault jumpsuit sleeve to his hand.

"This brings back memories," he said, smiling.

"Yeah." She laughed as she used the back of her free hand to wipe her eyes. "I remember how you wouldn't let me go down the stairs into the basement without holding your hand until I was five."

"Well, it's a big Wasteland. I should have been there to hold your hand when you first came out into it. So let me make that up to you now, love."

It was dark when they emerged from Smith Casey's garage. Suddenly remembering the Pip-Boy attached to his arm, James flicked to the screen that displayed the current date and time as well as a general map of the D.C. area. It read 03:57, 09/21/77. September 21? He was fairly certain he'd entered Vault 112 nearly ten days ago. Had time really moved so slowly in the simulator?

"Dad?"

"Hmmm?"

He turned to the sound of her voice, hardly able to discern her shadow in the blackness.

"Is that one Mars or Venus?"

He stepped closer until he was able to see her face and followed her pointed finger and gaze up to the night sky. He allowed himself a moment to marvel at the blanket of stars, noting he had not taken the time to appreciate its ethereal beauty since exiting Vault 101.

"I don't think it's either of those, honey," he said, narrowing his eyes as he looked up for added effect.

"No," Sara insisted. "I'm sure that's a planet and not a star."

"I'm pretty sure that one is actually your mother looking down at us."

Sara scoffed, but he noticed the smallest of grins creased her lips.

"Dad, please, I'm not seven years old anymore."

Suddenly, Dogmeat was growling. James glanced around, seeing nothing. He remembered those dumb, wild dogs that scavenged around the Jefferson Memorial when Project Purity was first founded. They'd spent half their days barking at absolutely nothing.

"Come on, I don't see—"

"Shhh!" Sara hissed, holding up a hand to silence him. Her other hand was already on the pistol holstered to the tool belt wrapped around her waist. Reluctantly, James followed suit, pointing his gun out into what seemed like nothingness.

He and Sara heard the quiet rustling a few seconds later. She froze, and he reached out for her in the dark. Their hands met, and he clung to her fingers. A wild animal or a robot he could take down easily. He pleaded with the universe that it not be a gang of Raiders, or even worse, a Super Mutant. He was no match for them, and, although Sara had disposed neatly of the mole rat earlier, he doubted she could take on anything more than scuttling wildlife.

After a tense moment, the sound receded and then ceased completely. It took Dogmeat several more seconds to relax, but as soon as he did so did Sara. She reholstered her pistol and beckoned to James.

"Come on, Dad. Let's keep going."

They encountered very little resistance as they journeyed slightly southeast toward Rivet City. James could not wait to show his daughter the city sprung of an old battleship. He could not wait to see the look on Madison's face when he showed up with the baby she'd held nineteen years ago and incontrovertible proof that the G.E.C.K. was real. Most of all, he could not wait to return to Project Purity with the little girl he'd carried out of it nearly two decades earlier.

As they neared the edge of the downtown D.C. ruins, he noticed Sara was dragging her feet.

"Everything all right, honey?" he asked, trotting forward to catch up with her. He placed a concerned hand on her shoulder.

"I'm fine, Dad," she reassured him, the slightest bit of exasperation evident in her tone. "I'm just getting sleepy. I haven't slept in…well…a long time. Can't we have some downtime in Rivet City before we get to work?"

James did not want to wait a second longer than was necessary. The fulfillment of his dream had never been so close. All they had to do was pick up Madison and take the quick walk over to the Memorial. Surely, Sara could wait to take a short nap when he and Madison were working to restart all their old equipment.

"We'll see, honey," he told her; unable to just give her a solid "No" after all she'd done for him in the past few hours. Maybe they could at least grab a bite to eat before setting off. He realized how famished he felt.

She seemed to realize this was his nice way of saying "No" and remained stubbornly silent for the rest of their trip. The sun was beginning to rise when the highest points of Rivet City became visible over the horizon. It was a stunning view as they neared the tidal basin: the gloriously bright rays of light reflecting off the water. Dogmeat darted forward to splash in the irradiated waters.

"This is Rivet City," James told Sara as they came to the very edge of the shoreline, and the entirety of the old aircraft carrier loomed in the distance.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, unimpressed, shielding her eyes against the sun to gaze out across the basin.

"You've been here already?" he asked.

"How do you think I found your trail at the Memorial, Dad? I talked to Dr. Li. She didn't seem too happy with you."

"No…"James replied. He found he was disappointed that his child's first introduction to Rivet City would not be with him. "No, I can't imagine she would be."

Sara turned her gaze away from the basin and back to her father, who was standing just a few feet behind her. Her eyes suddenly grew large with surprise, and she let out half a shriek before a blinding stab of pain shot through the back of James' head and he fell, forward, onto the sandy bank.

Sand shot into his mouth as he landed, and he gagged violently. What had hit him? His head felt tender, but he didn't think there was an actual injury. He took a moment and waited for the dizziness to pass, until the potential severity of this situation came crashing down on him like a bomb.

Half-blinded by sediment, he got to his hands and knees, coughing. He blinked furiously to try and clear his sight. The basin finally swam back into view and, slowly, its surroundings followed. He blinked again and saw a Raider, clad in full pain spike armor, crouched over Sara who was also on the ground.

"Hey!"

James' voice came out as little more than a gargle of spit and sand, but it was enough to catch the Raider's attention. He withdrew his hand from Sara's canvas bag, where he was shoving her bottle caps into his own pockets by the fistful. The two men's eyes met.

The Raider gave James a radiant grin and extracted a knife from the depths of his armor. Both men lunged toward one another at the same moment. James groped for the pistol at his side, and upon locating it, brought it up to collide with the Raider's jaw.

The Raider fell back, yelling in pain, and catching his foot on Sara's legs as he stumbled backwards. He went down, swinging his knife out wildly toward James. Instead the blade made contact with Sara's face, cutting a deep gash up her cheek and stopping where the top of her ear met her head.

Her screaming jarred James into drastic action. He only knew his little girl was in pain, and the bastard who had caused that pain was lying at his feet, looking up the barrel of James' gun. He owed Sara so much now. Had he ever done anything right for her? He'd left her behind in the Vault, only for her to be forced out into the Wasteland without a soul in the world to rely on. James pulled the trigger three times, firing three rounds directly into the man's skull before he could even really think about what he was doing.

The bullets caused the man's head to split open, spilling his brain out onto the sand. James stared down in horror at the dead man, sickeningly aware of what his overwhelming desire to protect his child had driven him to do.

He knelt down beside her and helped her into a sitting position. Blood was dripping freely from the wound on her face. She was futilely trying to stem the flow with the sleeve of her Vault 101 jumpsuit.

"Sweetheart, we have to get you to the clinic in Rivet City right now."


	13. Explanations

The dim lighting and faint smell of antiseptic of Dr. Preston's clinic brought back memories of James' nearly twenty years in the Vault. He fought against thoughts of Jonas. How many people were dead because of his actions? If he'd never left the Vault…if he'd have tried the resuscitations on his wife for just a bit longer…

Sara was here though, and he felt weighed down by guilt as he watched Dr. Preston apply medicine to the gash on her face. She hissed slightly in pain.

How could he have been so blind?

"There," Preston said, withdrawing his hand and the medicated wipe from Sara's cheek. "That will certainly look impressive for a little while, but you shouldn't have any problems with it healing."

"Thanks," Sara mumbled, raising a hand to poke gingerly at the wound on her face. She winced at the contact and lowered her hand.

"I think the best thing for you to do now is get some sleep," Dr. Preston added. "You look exhausted."

"I think that's what we'll do," James replied. He offered his hand to Sara as she hopped down from the examination table. She did not take it. "Thank you for everything, Dr. Preston."

They rented a room at the Weatherly Hotel. James ran down to the marketplace, at the center of the battleship, and bought them some breakfast to eat back in the room.

Sara remained abnormally quiet as she chewed. She seemed determined to look anywhere but at her father. As much as he wanted to tell her everything, James knew he should not force the conversation.

"Dad, can we talk for a bit?" she asked, as she took the last bite of her food.

"Of course, honey," he told her. "What's on your mind?"

"Is all of this about Mom? Are you trying so hard because of what happened to her?"

The question sent James' mind reeling. As usual, she had asked the one question he was entirely unprepared for. He almost wished she was nine again, and he had to explain the mechanics of sex. That seemed easier than trying to explain his motivations…motivations that had led him to fail in almost every way.

"Oh, Sara." He took several deep breaths, forming the words carefully in his mind before he spoke. "If only you could have known how much Project Purity meant to her. She believed in what we were doing. She gave up so much for it. I just…I can't stand the idea of that going to waste."

"What exactly is Project Purity?" Sara asked. "I mean…I know the final goal. I had to go to the Memorial and find your journals. That's how I knew you'd gone to Vault 112."

"It started as only an idea. It was your mother's in fact. Remember the Bible passage we had in our apartment back in the Vault?"

Both of them recited the passage verbatim and in unison. James couldn't help but smile as the words left his daughter's mouth. How many times, all those years ago, had he and Catherine spoken the words aloud together? In that moment, he felt as if he were speaking to her once again.

"Over time that idea took the form of a purifier," he continued. "Not like the one in the Vault…but one capable of purifying millions of gallons of water. It was right on the Jefferson Memorial…well, I suppose you saw it. I hope one day soon you'll see it in action."

"What went wrong?"

"The year before you were born was difficult. We had several Brotherhood guards because their Elder believed in our work. But, Super Mutant attacks began to pick up, and we had no significant results. The guards began to doubt the project and us. And then you were born."

He thought vividly of when he'd first held the girl sitting across from him over nineteen years ago. The dim lighting and musty conditions of the room had meant nothing. She had shone like a beacon of hope for the project. She had finally arrived. She was the daughter he'd secretly hoped for. She was _Sara_.

"After your mother died," James pressed on, "Madison wanted to continue working. But I knew it just wasn't feasible anymore. I had to take care of you, and I couldn't protect you from Super Mutant attacks forever. So, in the end, I chose you."

"How did Mom really die?"

He sighed, remembering just as vividly the horrible moments after Sara's birth. His shock…hopelessness…despair.

"I know you have reason to doubt so many things I've told you, but I never lied to you about your mother. Not once. Please believe, if anything else, that she loved you very much."

Sara nodded and looked down at her lap. James could see there was another question brewing in her mind, but something made her hold it back.

"What are you thinking?" he prompted her.

She looked up at him, and he was surprised to see there were tears in her eyes.

"Dad, since we're getting everything out in the open here, can I ask you a question I've always wanted to ask?"

"I owe you that much."

"And you won't lie? Even if you think it would be easier to do so?"

"No more lies between us."

"Do you…?" She trailed off as the words were thick and quavering with emotion. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Do you blame me for what happened to Mom?"

James kept his promise and did not immediately reassure her with false placations. He sat and thought for a moment as his daughter stared at him through watery eyes.

He thought back to the moment when he'd decided to leave Project Purity and try to get into Vault 101. He could recall it quite clearly. He was sitting inside the lab at the Memorial, holding Sara who was less than a day old. The pain of Catherine's sudden death was fierce and almost unbearable, but he recalled that even fiercer was his love for the little girl he could cradle in his hands.

"No," he finally replied. He reached across the table and took her hands in his own weathered ones. "No, I've never blamed you for what happened to your mother. Without you, your mother's death would have been the end of me. You gave me a purpose. You saved my life, Sara."

She jumped up and ran over to embrace him. Both father and daughter wept openly together. They had never done so before.

They slept for the remainder of the morning and much of the afternoon. After they woke, they got a late lunch in the market downstairs. Sara told him of her escape from the Vault, her travels to Megaton and the GNR Plaza, and how she found the dog who rested his head on her knee and stared hopefully at the food on her plate.

They laughed together at Three Dog's rampant enthusiasm. He told her of the time he first met her mother, far out west, and how their shared passion for science had easily turned into love. She asked about the first time he'd ever seen a ghoul and admitted her surprise at catching sight of Gob in Moriarty's bar (quickly reassuring her father that she had treated the ghoul with respect as she would any other person). She agreed to go with him after lunch to see Dr. Li in the laboratory.

"Just as long as you promise not to get stuck in any more virtual realities," she added as they traversed the halls of Rivet City with Dogmeat at their heels. "Come on, Dad. You had to be saved by your nineteen year old kid. That's pretty sad."

They found Madison Li just as they had both walked in on her in their respective times arriving in Rivet City. She was elbow deep in work, scratching out some calculations on a clipboard as she closely examined a bubbling beaker.

"I told you it would work, Madison," James said loudly, coming down the stairs to stand beside his old colleague.

She jumped at this intrusion into her thoughts and turned to face him. Her gaze flickered over to Sara and then back to James.

"You're back!" she cried, her incredulity evident. "You're both back."

"We're back to tell you the G.E.C.K. works! Madison, we can do this!"

"James…"

He knew she was fighting it, but he could see the light returning to her eyes that he remembered so clearly from twenty years ago.

"I don't know…"she insisted. "It has been so long. We don't even know if the Memorial and the purifier are still intact."

"They are," Sara piped up. "Dad and I both went there. That's how he found the G.E.C.K. in Vault 112, and that's how I tracked him down."

Madison regarded this comment with obvious amusement.

"Sara, I know you're probably just as idealistic as your Dad—"

"And what's wrong with that?" Sara insisted. "Look, I know a lot has changed. A lot of the Wasteland has changed for the worse according to what Dad says. It isn't the same without my mother, but I can help. I can pick up her work."

"That's sweet of you, but you're just nineteen—"

"Okay," Sara interrupted, a bit of venom coming into her voice. "Can we just move past the fact that you're _still_ jealous my dad chose my mom instead of you so you can stop condescending me and yelling at him?"

James felt his jaw literally drop at these words.

"_Sara_!"

She would never have said anything so blunt back in the Vault. Even as horror at her brashness spread into his cheeks, he felt a streak of pride at her newfound no-nonsense attitude. She was truly Catherine's daughter.

Madison had been rendered speechless, which was quite a feat. She looked as though she had just swallowed something very sour.

"So…let's just move past that," Sara continued, ignoring her father, "and agree that if we have the brainpower to see my mom's project through then we should finish it. Not only for her sake, but for the sake of the people out in the Wasteland."

"Come on, Madison," James said. "We can do this. We just have to get the power back on and find a G.E.C.K."

Dr. Li surveyed father and daughter for a very long time. They both held her gaze. Finally, she heaved a great sigh and unfolded her arms.

"Alright, fine! _Fine_!" she relented. "But both of you owe me a drink afterwards!"


	14. Endings

It was late evening when James stepped back into the familiar Rotunda for the last time in his life.

He had no inkling of the life-altering (and life-ending) events that would unfold in about an hour, and it was with wild jubilance that he turned to face his daughter, the Rivet City science team, and Madison as they entered the building after him.

"We're back!" he cried. "Can you believe this?"

He turned and strode several paces down the hallway toward the gift shop. It smelled musty, and the air felt distinctly damp but these minor inconveniences did little to dissuade James. It was here at this Rotunda that everything had begun and everything had ended. Now, it could begin once more.

"Dad, it's an old building, not a candy store," Sara said, biting back a laugh.

"It's better than a candy store!" he insisted. "This is it! This is where Project Purity is going to be resurrected after twenty years! Your mother's dream, Sara… _Here_!"

"Our dream," she corrected him. "It's mine now too."

"Of course. I'm glad you're here with me once more."

Madison remained obstinately quiet as the group carved a path through the Super Mutant bodies and the shoddily constructed barricades the monsters had erected. The carnage seemed relatively recent—the creatures' faces were beginning to sink in with decay, but they were far from skeletal.

"Who killed all of these Super Mutants?" Anna Holt asked with wonder, nearly tripping over the outstretched arm of one. Madison barked at her to watch where she was going.

"I did," Sara replied calmly, leading the way through the chaos. She held her right arm out in front of her, spreading her Pip-Boy's minimal lighting across the floor in front of them to help guide their way.

"You what?" James asked. He nearly stopped short in his shock, but he was not eager to find himself outside of the halo of light he and Sara's Pip-Boys provided the group.

"I told you. I had to track you down somehow. Dr. Li told me you'd headed over here after you spoke with her, and your recordings led me to Vault 112."

"But…you killed _all _of these Super Mutants. By yourself?"

"Dogmeat helped. Didn't you, boy?"

The mutt at Sara's heels barked joyously in response to the sound of his name.

James thought back to the little girl in Vault 101 who had screamed and ducked whenever she fired off her BB gun. It had taken her a few weeks to move past the sheer terror she felt at the sharp sound in the confined space behind the old basement lab. He could hardly believe it was the same girl who now strode confidently beside him: no longer a little girl, but a young woman, clad in salvaged combat armor, with a hunting rifle in her hands and a switchblade strapped to the side of her thigh. If not for the red hair and the wire-rim glasses, he would not recognize his own daughter at all.

This realization filled him with both terror and pride so fierce he felt as though the two emotions physically filled his chest. He could hardly fathom what sort of events over the span of hardly a month could have changed his timid daughter who preferred to spend her time doing paperwork in the safety and quiet of the physician's office to this burgeoning fighter whose face and hands were already visibly weathered by the harshness of the Wasteland.

Back in Rivet City, she'd told him of her terrifying first days outside of the Vault: how she'd spent her very first night in the outside crying in a closet in Moriarty's Bar because no one was willing to lend her a bed for free and of the first man she'd had to kill (she mentioned she had been forced to protect herself with lethal force to escape the Vault but she refused to tell him who these attackers had been). It was as he had feared: a lone raider out to steal some caps and rape someone if he could. She admitted she'd managed to wrestle a knife from her pocket and thrust it into the man's temple as he'd fought to simultaneously pin her to the ground and undo the bottom half of his armor.

But, despite the horrors that had forged this new warrior, James was glad to see her emerge. He'd spent more nights lying awake in worry than he cared to admit to Sara. He wondered: why was she more content to spend time with him than go hang out with the other girls her age? Why was she so painfully shy but unflinchingly devoted around Amata? In a darker moment, he'd once wondered why she had to be attracted to other women; why did she have to further alienate herself from her peers? He was ashamed of these thoughts. He knew she could not choose how she felt, but all he wanted was a safe, happy, independent life for her once he left Vault 101. Why had she always seemed so adverse to his unspoken wishes?

Sara pushed open the heavy door that led into the Jefferson Memorial's Rotunda. James stepped inside and breathed in deeply, unfazed by the musty smell that clung to the old lab. The last time he'd been here he had been no closer to a solution than when he'd left nineteen years earlier with a tiny baby cradled in his arms. Now, he finally had the missing piece…or at least knew that said missing piece actually existed.

Madison was still quiet as she joined them in the Rotunda. Her assistant, Anna, let out an audible gasp of wonder, and James was tempted to do the same. Despite the rusted steel beams and the creaking stairwell up into the old lab the place still shone with the promise of discovery. He could picture Catherine in the scenery just as effortlessly as he'd seen her there so long ago with her blonde hair pulled up in a messy ponytail and one hand resting gently on her swollen belly while the other fluttered over the purifier's control panel. One palm nestled against both of her babies.

He walked over to stand beside the two precious things his wife had left him and slung an arm over Sara's shoulders. She smiled at him just as her mother had grinned at him nineteen years ago.

"Let's get to work, honey."

One quick glance over the Memorial's maintenance panel told James there was more to be done before they could truly get started than he originally suspected. Still, he was not discouraged. He, Catherine, and Madison had set up the lab so only two people were needed to work on it at any given time. It had made shift rotations much simpler.

He and Madison could settle into their old workstations while Sara fixed some of the basic maintenance problems. He was glad to have her out of the way anyways, simply for her own safety, as he was concerned that the power grid could possibly spark severely once it was kicked to life after nearly two decades of dormancy.

There was some flooding too down in the sub-basement that would make access to the main circuit breaker all but impossible. Despite these setbacks, he sighed happily as he rummaged around in an old storage locker for some old fuses.

"Just like old times, eh, Madison?" he asked.

She ran a finger down one of the control panels and it came away coated in dust.

"Well, at least I still look good," she finally said.

It took James a moment to recognize that his stern colleague was actually making a joke. He laughed, and she soon joined in too.

"I'll give you that," he told her.

Sarah watched their exchange with obvious discomfort, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Madison's team from Rivet City had begun to settle into their roles with little effort: Anna Holt and Alex Dargon were taking down some initial readings at their mentor's instructions. In that moment she looked more like the 19 year old he remembered leaving in Vault 101, in spite of her weaponry and armor.

Sensing his child's feelings of awkwardness, James withdrew himself from the storage trunk and spoke directly to her.

"Love, while I'm searching for these fuses, will you do me a favor?"

"Sure, Dad."

"It looks like there's been some flooding in the sub-basement, and we can't turn on the electricity with all that standing water. Could you run down there and engage the pumps to start draining all of it out?"

Sara's face fell a little at these words. They stared at one another in silence for several long seconds. Finally, a soft scoff escaped her lips.

"You…you want me to run around turning on drains and pumps, Dad? Can't Garza or somebody else do it?"

"I don't see why you're so reluctant to do this, Sara. You've been saying you want to help me—"

"Yeah, _actually _help you! I thought…" She trailed off and shook her head. "Never mind. Fine. They're in the sub-basement, right?"

She turned to go, and James reached out to grab her hand.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"I just thought I'd be taking Mom's place here," she muttered, refusing to look him in the eyes. "Instead, you're making me run errands anyone could do."

James couldn't help but smile a little. There was a new edge to her voice (and one he couldn't say he appreciated, but that was a conversation for another time), but underneath it there was the little girl he recognized: the one who wanted to work alongside him. He tugged on her hand and pulled her in close to him, tapping his ear to indicate he wanted to whisper something to her.

"I know this isn't what you had in mind right away," he said quietly," but I'm asking you to do these errands, as you call them, because I trust you. I'm sure Madison's colleagues are all very nice people, but this is delicate equipment that is vital to our work. I need someone I know I can rely on."

Sara didn't seem entirely convinced, nor were his words entirely true, but they seemed to placate her enough.

"Okay," she acquiesced. "Just switch the pumps on and then come back to you?"

"You've got it. There are intercoms along the way you can reach me on if you have any questions."

With a word to the mutt near her feet, Sara and Dogmeat turned and headed out of the Rotunda.

In her absence, the remaining four scientists worked in silence. It was the same quiet that had descended over the Rotunda many times two decades ago. James reveled in it. He thought of the times he and Catherine had shared shifts here before they had acted on their feelings: flirtatious glances shared over a control panel, the way she tended to "accidentally" bump into him every single time she passed by, and, finally, the time she'd simply said "James, can we stop pretending?" and kissed him.

They'd been married only six months later—less than a year after they'd met out West and decided to relocate their efforts to the D.C. Tidal Basin at the urging of her old friend Dr. Li. They'd been careful at first, eager at and inspired by their initially promising findings, and knowing a baby would change the project's entire dynamic. But two years after they'd married, progress was at a standstill, and Catherine and James' shared overnight shifts often turned toward less scientific pursuits. They'd been careless about it, they had both admitted this when Catherine found out she was pregnant. But she had been _so _excited at the prospect of being a mother; this infectious excitement had washed away the multitude of doubts James had at the idea of being a parent.

They should have spent more time preparing too. Elder Lyons had offered to have some Brotherhood medics on stand-by as Catherine neared the end of her pregnancy, but she had insisted they weren't necessary. James had vouched for their presence, as they had far more experience than he and Madison as well as much more advanced medical supplies should anything go wrong, but Catherine remained adamant that her first (and likely only) child did not need to come into the world in a room full of people its parents did not know.

Things had seemed fine anyways, he had convinced himself. She had no trouble working up until the day Sara was born. She'd been the one who calmly proclaimed, "Oh, I think that was a contraction" in the middle of running some tests, then refused to head down into the makeshift clinic room they'd set up for the baby's arrival until those tests were finished.

They could have used available birth control…they could have tested Catherine for any health problems once they found out she was pregnant…they could have prepared for her labor more effectively…they could have, they could have, they could have. But nothing changed what happened. Despite the nineteen years separating him from his wife, James felt a wave of sadness come over him as he sat listening, fuses in hand, for the flood pumps to switch on.

There was a very soft _thump_ below him, and a few seconds later Sara's voice came crackling over the intercom.

"The pumps are on, Dad."

James pressed the button to reply, and leaned in.

"Good work, honey. Hurry back, and I'll give you the switches you need for that main door."

"Okay, I'll be right up."

"You have such an amazing daughter, Dr. Fairchild."

James started at the new voice right behind him. He glanced up to find Anna Holt standing at a nearby computer, casually pressing keys despite the lack of electricity that kept the console firmly shut off.

"I'm sorry," she continued. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"No, no, that's okay," he reassured her, getting to his feet with some aid from a nearby chair. "And thank you. She's very much like her mother."

"Did you hear what they say she did in Megaton?" Anna continued. When James did not reply she took this as a sign to press on. "You've been there, right? You know that giant bomb in the middle of town—the one that those freaky cultists worship? According to some caravan drivers, who heard it from the sheriff in Megaton, Sara disarmed that thing."

Now she had his attention. James looked at the young assistant incredulously. Sure, he knew his daughter was intelligent…but to disarm a 200-year-old atomic bomb on her own? Surely, the facts had been greatly exaggerated in the rumor mill.

"No, I hadn't heard that," he finally told her.

Six feet came padding up the Rotunda's stairwell, and Sara and Dogmeat reappeared as if on cue.

"Honey, did you really disarm that bomb in Megaton?" James asked the moment his daughter stopped in front of him with her hand outstretched toward the fuses he held.

She was briefly taken aback by the suddenness and randomness of his question, but she nodded.

"Yeah," she finally said with an air of complete nonchalance.

James' jaw dropped in awe and horror. Was she insane? Who went voluntarily wading in that irradiated water to tinker with an unstable bomb?

"Dad…?"

"I…uh…I mean, honey, I'm proud of you, but that was incredibly dangerous!"

"I didn't go and just hit it or anything stupid," Sara insisted. "The flap over the control panel was loose anyways, and I was very gentle."

"Yes, but if something had gone wrong…"

"But it didn't. I couldn't just sit around and wait for it to blow up and take all of those nice people…well, okay, _most_ of them are nice…out with it."

James raised a hand and placed it against her face, delicately tracing her cheekbone for a few seconds.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," he finished lamely.

"I'm okay, Dad. I promise."

She reached out and took the fuses out of his other hand, then spun on her heel and started back out of the Rotunda once more.

"See you in a few minutes!" she called.

True to her word, it took Sara less than five minutes to locate and replace the dead fuses. The entire Memorial filled with a soft hum that grew louder in pitch until, with a great screech of effort, the Rotunda's main light flickered to life the same moment its six control panels and two computers all began to simultaneously beep and whir in protest. Alex, Anna, and Madison quickly set the devices to loop on a normal restart, which quieted them down. Once again Sara's voice crackled over the intercom.

"I'm hoping that terrible scraping sound was all the power coming back on up there, Dad?"

"The control panels were all a little reluctant to come out of their twenty year nap, but things look good up here. I appreciate it."

One angry beeping continued to blare near the intercom. Asking Sara to hold on for a second, James reached over to check out the problem.

"Sweetheart?" he continued.

"Yeah?"

"It looks like the pipes on the museum level need draining too. The switch should be on your way back up out in the Memorial's entrance hallway by the gift shop. Can you stop by and turn those pumps on before you report back here?"

"Geez, Dad," Sara replied, but there was a note of playfulness in her voice. "Next you're gonna ask me to fix all the toilets in here."

"Well, if you're offering…" he joked.

"No!"

Her laughter sounded over the intercom, and it only made him grin further. It was good to be working alongside her once more. He felt he had forgotten how infectious her enthusiasm could be.

"I'll see you when you get back."

"You bet, Dad."

The intercom stopped crackling, which signaled Sara had taken her finger off the button. He pulled up a chair and settled back to peruse one of the consoles for copies of old notes. Surely, there was much he had forgotten.

Within a few seconds, he was already engrossed in old calculations. Off in the distance he heard a steady whirring that began to grow in intensity.

"Alex, can you shut that off?" he asked, waving a hand in the general direction of the noise.

"Of course, Dr.—" the young man began, but Madison threw out an arm to stop him.

"James," she said, severely.

"Hmmm?"

"_James_!"

"I'm listening!" he insisted, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from the computer screen.

"That doesn't sound like any sort of machine we have in here."

The four scientists stopped speaking, and in the hushed silence they listened. The whirring continued to grow louder, until it was very clear that it was not a protesting control panel as James had originally expected.

"What is that?" Anna whispered.

The intercom crackled to life once more.

"Dad, some helicopters just landed outside on the walkways."

"Shit!" Madison cried, dropping the clipboard she was holding.

"Everybody stay calm," James demanded. "We don't know who they are. We have nothing to hide. This place is hardly operational."

"Dad, what's going on?" There was a hint of panic in his daughter's voice, evident even over the old intercom.

"Sara, I want you to stay where you are, do you hear me?"

"I can see them through the grates down here. I don't think they're Brotherhood, Dad. They're wearing some sort of metallic armor that I don't recognize."

James' gaze snapped over to Madison who stared at him in horror.

"Enclave," she said quietly.

"Madison, lock the doors. Sara, _you stay where you are_."

"What did Dr. Li say, Dad? Who are these people?" Her voice was rising with each word, fear obvious in each one.

"It's okay, honey," James said more forcefully than he meant to. "Stay quiet and stay down where you are with Dogmeat."

"Dad?!"

There was a magnificent crash in the front of the building. It sounded like the gift shop door being kicked in. Madison was running down the Rotunda's stairwell to lock its two entrances. Alex darted over to help her. Each door's deadbolt clicked reassuringly into place, but James was not confident they would hold for long. His previous experiences with the Enclave were, thankfully, brief and from a distance, but he had heard stories of their methods. He doubted something as simple as a door built over two hundred years ago to keep out dumb kids who wanted to sneak inside the Memorial at night would keep our determined people armed with plasma weapons.

"What do we do?" Anna asked him, her voice quavering.

"We'll talk to them," James told her. "We don't know what they want. They're probably not here to hurt us."

There was another loud crash against one of the Rotunda doors, but it did not budge. Madison and Alex jumped away from it at the sound, backing into the space underneath the Rotunda.

It was deathly quiet except for the Enclave's sounds on the other side of the door. James thought of the Super Mutant attacks that had increased in frequency in the year before Sara was born. They'd had a few close calls, but the Brotherhood guards had always prevented the monsters from ever reaching the Rotunda doors.

With the sound of splintering metal hinges, the door gave way. Three heavily armored individuals strode in through the wreckage brandishing plasma rifles. An older man followed them. He seemed insignificant in stature and attire compared to his hulking, fully armored fellows, but they looked to him for guidance.

"Can I help you?" James asked, stepped out onto the upper stairwell landing.

The older man's gaze shot up to James, and he beckoned the three guards to follow him, seemingly ignoring Madison and Alex who stood less than five feet from him.

"Yes, I believe you can. I am Colonel Autumn, and I am here on Enclave authority."

"I wasn't aware the Enclave had any authority in the Tidal Basin."

Colonel Autumn stiffened at these words, and he ascended the stairs with more rapidity than James would have expected of a man his age.

"When you see the Enclave, you see the United States Government. We are authorized to restore order and civility, by any means necessary."

James felt a prickle of fear run down his spine at these words. _Any means necessary_? Internally, he begged Sara to stay where she was, hidden and safely out of sight, while he sorted this out.

"I see," he replied, willing himself to keep calm. "Colonel, is it? This is a privately funded project, not a government subsidiary."

Autumn put a hand on James' shoulder. It was a friendly gesture in appearance, but he used this leverage to force James back into the Rotunda.

"The Enclave is seizing this project. You will hand over all activation codes and assist in operations."

James fought back against the Colonel's hand on his shoulder. Sensing this resistance, Autumn nodded to one of his guards to seal the airlock. The door slid shut behind him, sealing the two men, two of the Enclave soldiers, and Anna inside the Rotunda. Anna shrieked at the sound of it clanging shut. She backed away from the Colonel until she hit a control panel.

Breathing shakily, James glanced outside for a second before continuing. There was still no sign of Sara. He was grateful.

"As I told you, Colonel, this is a private project, and I'll have to ask you to leave."

"And as I told _you_, the Enclave is seizing this project, and you will assist in its operations. Do I make myself clear?"

Over the man's shoulder, James finally saw her enter. Sara came running in, taking the stairs two at a time, with her rifle out and ready to fire. Dogmeat was barking ferociously. She stopped short at the sight of the airlock door separating her from her father. Their eyes met for a moment.

"I would help you if I could, Colonel," James pressed on, his gaze not leaving his daughter who was frantically clawing at the bulletproof glass. "Our project isn't yet operational—"

Before he could finish this explanation, Autumn raised a hand in signal to one of his guards. The man pulled out his rifle, aimed it at Anna, and fired. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, and James saw the young woman slump over, dead, out of his peripheral vision.

He could not tear his gaze from Sara. He knew what he had to do. There was no other way to protect both her and Project Purity.

She was so amazing, he mused, even as he tried to focus on Autumn who was shouting at him: "Do I make myself clear yet?" The perfect blend of her parents…though, to her credit, he believed she had inherited Catherine's personality almost down to the tee. He hated the thought of leaving her, especially now that she was no longer tucked away in the safety of the Vault. There was so much still left unspoken between them. They were supposed to have the rest of his natural life to talk about everything. The unfairness of it only fueled his fury at the Enclave official standing opposite him.

"There's no need for violence," James insisted. "Of course I will cooperate with you. Just give me a moment to get the facility operational."

He gave his daughter a reassuring smile before he turned to the main control panel. He found his hands were shaking…was he afraid? Afraid of what? Afraid to die? Or afraid to leave his lovely daughter alone?

He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, and slowly entered the code to shut the whole thing down. It was "612"—the opposite of the "21:6" that had provided the inspiration for it all. His finger hovered uncertainly over the two.

"My patience grows thin," Autumn spoke up harshly.

Taking a breath to steady himself, James decisively brought his index finger down ont the final button. There was a frantic blaring from a nearby console as a lethal dose of radiation began to flood the chamber.

"You fool!" Autumn hissed, but James paid him no attention.

He estimated he had less than a minute of consciousness left, and he did not want to waste it on the Colonel. Instead, he turned back to face Sara who was now audibly screaming even over the din of the radiation alarm. His Pip-Boy's Geiger counter whirred to life as he crossed the distance between them and placed his hand on the glass door separating them.

"Go," he told her.

He felt his knees growing weak, and he fought to remain standing. He hated to see his child cry. Her screaming was dying down, replaced now by a wave of tears. Even if he could escape now, it was likely too late to be saved. But what he wouldn't give to remove the glass between them and brush off her tears like he had always done.

She put her hand up against his, and though the airlock door still separated them he imagined he could feel her palm on his. She would be okay, he told himself. Ever since she had come into this world, she had always been destined to be okay. He was simply grateful the universe had allowed him nineteen years with someone so lovely.

"Go," he repeated, and with these words his knees gave out. His shoulder hit the floor first, and the pain shot through his collarbone. A wave of nausea rolled over him. It would be nice to close his eyes for a few seconds. There was warmth in the blackness he felt reaching up to grab at him.

James fought it for a second longer to glance one more time at Sara. Madison was pulling on her arm, frantically shouting that they needed to flee. Behind him he felt movement. He supposed it was Colonel Autumn. But he found the blackness flickering at the edges of his vision did not allow him to care or comprehend.

He slipped into the warmth and his thoughts, though growing less and less coherent, were drawn to the memory of Sara's birth.

Madison exclaiming, "It's a girl!"

Catherine laughing.

Taking the tiny, squalling being into his arms for the first time and being so overcome with a wave of love and joy that he felt he would weep.

Sara, they had decided to call the baby if it were a girl.

_Sara_.

Across the sea of warmth, there was suddenly a new sensation. He did not open his eyes. He did not want to see that damned airlock door any more.

A pair of hands were on him. He reached up to take them and immediately recognized their feel. A woman spoke to him. A woman whose voice he had not heard in nineteen years.

"You did so well, love. I'm glad to see you again."


End file.
